Surviving Survivors' Guilt

Family members & lovers have asked me—in bewildered and/or judgey tones—why I “put all my business” on the Book Of Faces. The idea is that some things are to personal too share in public, or (in the case of an ex) I should do all my sharing to one person (her--this is just one reason she's an ex). I share the details of my ovarian & vaginal & uterine & intestinal health because this is stuff we should know about our bodies & too many folx with ovaries & vaginas don't learn these things, don't learn what is common, don't learn what is a sign of something amiss.

I share the details of emotional health to keep myself alive.

For those new to this channel, I am convinced that my mother died of Survivor’s Guilt. It took decades, but it’s no coincidence that she died the day before the 24th “anniversary” of the accident that changed/destroyed/reordered our lives. I myself suffer from Survivor’s Guilt: compounded of not only being the only one left alive who was in that car, but also feeling like I didn’t do enough when my mother was dying of colon cancer. Suppressed unending unfathomable grief & rage can kill you, so I spew my rage & grief out loud (in writing) as often as I can, to claw my way out of the vortex that would otherwise literally destroy me from the inside out as it did my Mama.

My Fierce Femme Sister Of My Heart once posed a question in a presentation she was giving “How do we transmute our rage so that it doesn’t kill us?” Suppressing it doesn’t work. Denying it doesn’t work. Medicating it doesn’t work. I haven’t consciously tried all of those methods, but examples of them not working abound. So I try to vomit my grief & my rage as often as I can. It’s seemingly endless so I don’t know that I’ll ever get it all out, but I know I don’t want to live with it stoppered inside me growing & festering.

And part of Surviving Survivor’s Guilt is living—as opposed to just existing. I owe it to my little family, my Mama, my little brother, my Big Mama. I owe it to them to experience all of being a human as much as I can becuase their ability to do so was cruelly & painfully stripped from them. I owe them living fully in my humanity.

What makes us human? Some say it’s opposable thumbs, some say it’s complex thought.

I say it’s the complexity & the depth of our emotions.

So by letting myself feel all of my feelings, the ones I enjoy & the ones that I don't enjoy, I am being fully human. When I allow myself to experience seemingly contradictory emotions at once, I am being fully human. When I am feeling a sorrow so profound I physically feel an ache, an emptiness behind my breastbone, I am being fully human. When I feel a rage that makes me want to burn the world down around me, I am being fully human. When I feel a joy so great it seems I might burst, I am being fully human.

It's not all unicorns & rainbows, but that's what being human is.

Survivor Guilt Kills.