I carry this box of feelings. It lies heavy in my hands.
It’s packed to the brim with sadness and fear and grief. With panic and regret. With pain and loss and love that has nowhere to go anymore. The box feels like too much to bear and I carry it with my arms outstretched. It’s heavier this way, more difficult to hold up. But I cannot stand it either to hold it closer to my heart.
Another reason being that I want to hand it over to someone. I don’t really care to whom. I just don’t want to have to carry it myself anymore. I’m desperately searching for someone else to hold all these feelings for me. At least for a short while. Therefore I tell everyone about my pain, I show my box to all of the people I encounter and speak to during the day.
Even to that stranger on the street on Sunday who asked me how I was doing because he wanted me to buy this artist’s newspaper from him. He was this old black man who spoke English with a US accent, and he took only a quick glance at my heartbreak before telling me this was all my own doing.
He didn’t pick up the box for me, of course. He told me that I was the only person capable of hurting myself emotionally. That the contents of my box were all just in my head and therefore under my control. I could choose to just put the box down and stop carrying its weight, the painful load.
In his eyes I was expecting too much of others. ‘The people around us are not obligated to love us, even if we think we’re entitled to their love’, is what he explained to me. I should stop frantically searching for help from the outside, help with carrying my box of feelings. I could accept help when offered to me freely, I shouldn’t count on it though.
When he spoke to me like that, I could feel the resistance rising in my chest. His way of explaining the world to me felt condescending, but also good in that way in which we sometimes like to be told what to do by the elders (and he was many decades my senior). I had never received tough love: bold words like this about love and pain. Words that didn’t care if they hurt my ego, but cared enough to try and make me see a way out of my misery.
So, part of me felt grateful for the advice of a grandfather I’d have never known. And a much more mature part of me smirked down on this stranger, not respecting him as much anymore, because–even at his age–he still mistakes his personal disappointments for a universal truth about life as a human under humans.
I think we can and should look for help from others. I don’t think we should expect, but hope and open our mouths and hearts to ask for support. I think we should be grateful instead of entitled when receiving it. And we shouldn’t overstay our welcome. Think of our helpers and their limited resources by moving on with our boxes. Even if we don’t know yet where or to whom we can hand them over for a little break next time. But we shouldn’t be convinced we have to do this alone all the time.
Just put the box down?
And yes, I could probably decide at any point in time to put the box down. To just drop it in front of me, let it fall to the ground, break open and let its contents spill all over the place. The chance that I make a huge mess, though, is big. The chance that I let it literally fall on my feet (which is a German idiom for worsening a situation for yourself) is also not very small. And even the thought of just slowly setting the box down in front of me – since it’s all under my control and I can choose just not to hurt RIGHT?!??!! – feels like I’m only setting a trap in my own path.
I will fall over this big ass box of grief whenever I forget it’s there. Because you can choose to look the other way, but grief doesn’t ignore you back. It doesn’t just dissolve into the Void. It’s a substance that sticks to your feet if you step into a box full of it, making them heavy, slowing your pace down.
The only way to be able to move forward despite the grief mud in front of you is: unpacking the box. Using the smallest gadget to scoop out the slimy grief, say a spoon, and spread it out thinly in front of you. So that you can walk on it without the layer being so thick that your soles keep getting stuck.
So yeah, that’s a lot of dirty work. It’ll take time and resilience and patience and bravery. And sometimes the kindness of others taking over for an afternoon so you can rest.
I disagree with the alternative said stranger chose for his own life. Because what does that mean?
It means never moving along your path. Being blocked by one or more boxes. Letting them pile up around you like a cardboard fortress. A wall that keeps people out but will still not protect you from the elements. A shelter that’ll burn in seconds and take you down with it. That keeps you from moving on and over time blocks even your outlook on the path that could lay ahead of you.
No, that’s sad. It’s so much more sad than hurting myself by carrying and unpacking and carrying and unpacking my box. I know it’ll never be fully empty while wandering my life’s path. But I also know that only this way will I keep meeting other people with their boxes, so that I’ll never be alone in this.