I Am So Popular: The Power of Pissed Offedness

In the meanwhile, until that happens—and I know this could take a week, six months, a year—there is that one moment in the morning. There I am, a little light is creeping in the window, I have a vague sense that I am the innards of a Boston Terrier sandwich, Bubbles and Rebound having pinned me in tightly. Only in that moment, I don’t recognize the concepts: dogs, daylight, morning. I don’t know anything at all. Not who I am or where I am. And it is a glorious moment, save for the fact that I only realize that after it is gone, and the Monkey Mind has switched back on, and once again my head is spinning.

Once I am back in this reality, odds are high that a quick assessment of my mood du jour will fall into one of five categories: denial, bargaining, anger, depression, or acceptance. Some of you will recognize these as what Elisabeth Kübler-Ross identified as the five stages of grief. As I learned in therapy when I was going through a divorce (and, at long last, dealing with a lot of my childhood trauma), on top of every other complaint one might have about the process of grief, these stages are not linear. Just because Monday’s denial gives way to Tuesday’s acceptance doesn’t mean you won’t fall back into pretending things are just fine again on Wednesday. My therapist suggested I think of the process as akin to climbing a spiral staircase (curious aside: I have a phobia of spiral staircases) and try to understand that some days I will brush up against the wall of one stage or another before spiraling back out to a less stressful place. (Rinse, repeat.)

Of all the stages of grief, maybe in the long run I like acceptance best—because if you can actually make it that far, you are free to trot along less burdened, at least until some other grief trigger gets pulled somewhere down the road (inevitable). But in the short run, while I’m really, truly in it, I have to say that I am most fond of anger. This I was reminded of yesterday, as that single, blissful groggy moment gave way to full consciousness and I realized I was furious with things going on in my life.

Taking it to the next level, once I identified this, I knew that, if I played it just right, I would be in for a day full of the Pleasantness of Pissed Offedness. I say this sans a hint of sarcasm. I say this because the day before I was so weighted down with depression I could barely go about the most basic business of the day. Not so with anger. Anger, when approached properly, is a catalyst for change, an energy source for getting shit done.

And so, while I was hardly gleeful, I was nonetheless motivated, hopping up before 7 a.m., putting nose to grindstone to knock out a deadline that is breaking my ass, meeting a friend for breakfast, acing a job interview, enjoying the curious pleasures of tattoo needles, and wrapping up the evening with a meeting to plan a fundraiser for a school for girls in Afghanistan. Overall and relatively speaking, a five star day.

It is ironic that I’m floundering around in grief these days. Because next week my latest book will be released nationally. It’s called Stricken: The 5,000 Stages of Grief. Technically, it’s not just my book. I did conceive the project a couple of years ago, during my divorce, as a way to both stay busy and give voice to the grief I felt at that time, a grief that, compared to now, was so much more threatening. A grief that literally made me ill for many months. But I was overwhelmed enough to know I couldn’t do it alone. I brought in another editor to assist, and sought contributors to help.

Nearly two dozen people—some professional writers, some not— wrote pieces about their own experiences with grief. There were people who had dealt with the death of a child, a grandparent, a spouse. People who work with the dying, have lost a parent, a sibling, a marriage. People from all walks with all sorts of tales to tell of how they did (or did not) deal with this unavoidable thing that, while some try to bypass, eventually has its way with you. Immersing myself in such a project—both reading the essays and editing a book—was, admittedly, a curious way to deal with grief.

The result is an odd duck of a book. Could something so heavy really console others in their darkest moments? Do people want to feel the pain of a bereaved parent while they, themselves, can barely manage their own distress? Admittedly, before a pre-release reading at BookPeople last month, I was a little nervous contemplating all this. Initially, I asked readers to consider reading excerpts that were less heavy. But one contributor gently reminded me that those who showed up to hear us read understood what they would be getting into. And so the curious evening unfolded, a room full of a hundred listeners or more, many tears shed, but everyone sticking around until the end.

Knowing what I know now about grief—from past experiences, from reading the stories of others—actually does help. Last time around, I was so blinded by the process I holed up in my house, stopped eating for six months, and totally lost myself. This time around, at least I can identify which stage I am in at any given moment, and on those “lucky” days when the stage is rage, I run with it.

Not the first time I’ve contemplated the worth of anger. My last book, Pissed Off: Finding Forgiveness on the Other Side of the Finger, was a full on exploration of an anger that had haunted me my whole life, the legacy of my constantly angry father, who kept me living in a state of fear and anxiety that prevented me from exhaling for the first thirty years of my life, until I started seeking help in the form of meditation, therapy, martial arts and yoga. In Pissed Off, I include a conversation I had with a Buddhist monk I am very fond of, Venerable Thubten Chodron. I met her at a monastery in Missouri many years ago, and hearing her speak is what led me to pursue the concept of enlightenment and the power of sitting still and breathing, practices that continue to serve me well.

We differ on the idea of anger. And as I recall our long ago conversation, she said something along the lines of it not being something to give into. In the big picture, I took her advice to heart, learned to identify everyday triggers and work to avoid the temptation to snap in response. I became mindful of these frequent occurrences and began, slowly, to change. That’s a goal I’m sure will keep me busy for the rest of this life and, if reincarnation is real, probably for at least another ten to two hundred lifetimes.

In the meanwhile, there are days when I toss the goal out the window, and allow myself to feel gratitude for the abundance of pissed offedness that sometimes still shows up. Those days, I strive to not take direct aim at others, even if I am rationalizing that they are the cause of the suffering. Instead, I work it like a strong wind unexpectedly whipping into my life. I kill the motor of depression and denial. I silence the bargaining. I sail through the day.

Spike Gillespie’s books are available at BookPeople and BookWoman and she hopes you’ll shop local. She blogs at www.spikeg.com. And she is Head Mistress for the Dick Monologues. Next show March 11th. Email spike@spikeg.com to reserve seats.