Sitting In Discomfort And Feeling The Shitty Feelings

In yesterday’s post, I wrote about our decision to move back to our local swim team after two years on a different team.

A team the kids are all enjoying being a part of and a team where I very much enjoy coaching.

I know this is the right decision for us.

But BOY am I struggling with it.

Because now that the news is officially out there, the texts and messages have started coming in.

There are lots of happy texts from old teammates welcoming us back to our former team.

But then there are the texts coming in from current teammates.

We will really miss you guys.

We totally understand your decision and don’t know how you’ve managed all the driving for this long, but this is a loss for the team.

The kids absolutely love you as a coach.

UGH.

I am a crier by nature. Anyone who knows me knows this. I’ve always been that way.

I’ve always felt things very, very deeply.

I cry when I’m really happy, and I cry when I’m really sad.

And today I‘m really sad.

I am so sad.

I’m sad for Number 3 (who is the most affected by the switch) and I’m sad for myself and I’m sad for the group of kids I coach.

Because saying goodbye is really fucking hard.

It is for me, anyway.

I hate it.

When I was a teacher I was that teacher who bawled her brains out on the last day of school.

I genuinely enjoy working with kids.

And I love coaching kids because for me coaching swimming isn’t about creating fast swimmers.

I mean, that’s one goal.

But it’s not the goal.

For me, coaching swimming is about helping kids realize their potential as human beings. It’s about making sure kids know they have value, whether they are the fastest kid on the team or the slowest kid on the team.

It’s about making sure kids know they are important and they matter and they are cared about. It’s about connections.

And I’ve made a lot of connections with the kids I coach. And I’m really gonna miss them. A LOT.

So, while leaving the team is the best decision for my family, it’s a huge loss for me.

And I think it’s bringing up a lot of really old feelings.

Because we still have four weeks left with our current team. So it’s not an immediate departure.

It feels more like a slow death to me.

I know this might sound dramatic, but it’s what it feels like.

And this is something that’s important for all of us to remember.

Feelings are feelings and grief is grief.

I doesn’t have to be triggered by massive trauma.

Sometimes massive trauma triggers grief in little, seemingly inconsequential moments.

My feelings today run much deeper than this swim team.

You know I had a brother who died when I was sixteen.

He was three years old.

He was diagnosed with leukemia at 18 months old.

He went through chemo and radiation, and then, when he relapsed multiple times, he underwent a bone marrow transplant when he was about 2 1/2 years old as a last resort. Our Hail Mary.

About four months later, we learned he had relapsed for what would be the final time.

For the next two months, I watched my brother slowly deteriorate.

He died at home in my parents’ bed, two weeks after his third birthday.

It was brutal.

Sometimes you think that knowing something is coming gives you time to prepare and it’s easier to handle in the end.

It’s not.

Watching a person die doesn’t soften the death.

You can’t prepare for a loss like that.

And that’s what this feels like.

I think tomorrow I’ll feel a little bit better and be able to see things from a more level-headed perspective.

Maybe the next day will be a little better than that.

But for today, it’s not how I feel.

This decision just became real two days ago when I officially told the head coach. It’s still pretty raw.

Nobody is dying.

But it’s still a death.

It’s the end of part of our lives that we don’t really want to end.

That we would preserve if we could.

But I can’t.

Trying to stifle these crappy feelings for ourselves and our children is where we are well-meaning, but often go wrong.

We don’t give ourselves a chance to feel bad. We do what we can to squelch the bad feelings.

We just want to feel good. We want our kids to feel good. All the time.

But trying to numb ourselves or stop the bad feelings prevents us from ever releasing them.

When we stuff them down, they may not be right at the surface a week or a month or a year from now, but they are still there.

Festering.

Gaining strength.

Like that monster in Stranger Things.

And when those feelings build up enough power to break through the surface then the grief monster is fucking huge and now you really have a problem to deal with.

So I’m trying really hard to feel the shitty stuff today.

I have spent the day intermittently bursting into tears.

I know this feeling is temporary.

I know, as all things do, it will pass.

I know that I’ll get through it.

But right now it hurts pretty badly.

These are the times we want to numb things and just make the pain go away.

I want relief so badly right now.

I want to eat everything. Or bingewatch The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel or Ozark. Or take a nap. Or all three.

Here is the thing though.

Every time I cry things get a little bit better.

And that is a way for me to get some relief. It doesn’t feel good in the moment.

But it’s allowing the shitty feelings to escape. And with each cry, the healing and recovery accelerates.

Feeling these feelings is hard.

Feeling bad sucks.

It makes it easy to question my decisions.

It would be easy to change my mind right now.

That would make things better immediately.

But it would make them worse eventually.

So I’m sitting in discomfort knowing I can get through the bad feelings.

I can do this.

When I get to the other side, because I will, I’ll be a little bit stronger and a little bit wiser.

And I’ll be a little bit better equipped when life presents me with the inevitable next hard thing.

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