Tag Archives: love

Love

Posted on December 29, 2013 by Christy Barongan
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
***

I don’t mean to sound blasphemous, but I’ve always had a problem with this definition of love.  I have never been able to love anyone in this way, nor have I ever been loved in this way.  Not from another human being, at least.  This may be the way that God loves us, but for me, this standard minimizes the value of the imperfect love that we offer to one another.

Being with my family for several days is a prime example of how painful and complicated love can be. We have all been impatient, unkind, envious, and proud with one another at some point.  I could go through the entire paragraph, but you get the idea.  Yet I have never questioned my love for my family or their love for me. It is the most enduring love that I have known and that I will know in this lifetime.

Perhaps it is my harsh superego and my perfectionism that tortures me with quotes like this one.  My demons turn what is supposed to be a helpful guideline for how to love into something that makes me feel inadequate and guilty. But I know that I am not the only one who feels this way.  I know many people who berate themselves and others for not being able to give and receive this kind of love.

The messages about love that have been most helpful to me are that God is love, and that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves.  I take this to mean that love for self, others, and God are all the same; you cannot truly experience one without the others.

This should come as no surprise to you if you have been following my blog, but for me the most difficult part is loving myself.  And this is often true for the people I see in therapy, too.  It helps to commit to loving myself when I think of it as a necessary part of the equation.

Surprisingly, blogging has been an opportunity to experience this trinity of love.  As I have mentioned in a previous post, I started this blog with the intention of helping other people.  I was not expecting it to be a way of receiving help.  And I certainly wasn’t expecting it to bring me closer to God.  Yet here is another post that ends with God.

Striving to give and receive this kind of love is still a tall order, but for me, it’s a more hopeful goal than striving to love perfectly.

2 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Gratitude

Posted on December 25, 2013 by Christy Barongan

Over the past few weeks I have been praying for a way to take in what I love about Christmas. Singing Christmas songs.  The lights and decorations.  The food.  Having my entire family together. And reflecting on the significance of having our Savior born in the most humble beginnings.

I looked at the news headlines about the homily Pope Francis gave last night, and true to my prediction, it was a message of acceptance and forgiveness.  The quote that stood out to me was the reminder that Jesus was all-powerful but he made himself vulnerable for us.  There is great strength in vulnerability; it is His vulnerability that redeems us.

In this blog I have made myself vulnerable by sharing all of the thoughts and feelings that I usually keep to myself.  After writing my post on forgiveness and reading people’s responses, that was the most vulnerable I have felt thus far.

People who have never been depressed do not realize what a dark place it is to be in.  For example, “normal” people can make themselves happier by practicing gratitude, by reflecting on people who are less fortunate than themselves, by counting their blessings.  The assumption is that sadness and gratitude are mutually exclusive.

When you are depressed, your demons turn this well-meaning advice into further evidence that you are a bad person for being depressed because you are not able to snap out of it, despite all the things you have to be thankful for.  So it is especially difficult to practice gratitude when you are depressed because it often makes you feel worse.

However, my spiritual guru is the Franciscan Priest Richard Rohr, and one of the most helpful things that he emphasizes is that spirituality is not either/or, as we tend to think in Western religions. It is not good or bad, right or wrong.  Spirituality is both/and.  So I can practice gratitude and still be depressed.  They can both be true, and that’s OK.

Today I am already thankful for many things.  I am thankful that the party wasn’t as overwhelming as I feared it would be.  That the homily last night had a message that was meaningful to me.  That I’ve had meaningful conversations with two of my brothers, and in a few hours my other brother and his family will be here.  I am thankful for the friends who have already sent me texts to wish me Merry Christmas.

And I am thankful for this blog.  I think God gave me this blog because He knew that these next few months would be difficult.  So He gave me a way to share my pain, to reach out to others, and to ask for help.  It really is true that making ourselves vulnerable may be the most powerful thing we can do to experience love and connect with other people.  I think that this is what Jesus would want us to experience most of all on His birthday.

So I am thankful to all of you who have taken the time to read my blog on Christmas Day.  And I thank my friend Sharon for giving me the cartoon below.

 

1 Comment

Posted in Self-Acceptance, Spirituality and tagged , , , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Breakups

Posted on December 19, 2013 by Christy Barongan

I have always found it strange that you can be so close to someone that you know all their habits, quirks, and life history, and then you break up and you have nothing to do with them.

Before, you knew what they’re schedule was for the day, what they ate for breakfast, what deep and meaningful thoughts they’ve had, if any.  Now you don’t know anything because you’re not there anymore, sharing the same space, sleeping in the same bed.

But you also find out that you didn’t know the person as well as you thought.  The process of breaking up itself teaches you things about your partner–how they deal with loss, how important you are, how hard they’ll fight for something they believe in.

To me, the saddest thing of all is how cruel the other person can be in the breaking up process.  How they can act like someone who never loved you at all.  As though you had never made vows to spend the rest of your lives together.  Suddenly they can become a person who despises you and your sadness.

I’ve had the good fortune of not being broken up with in this way, but I have to admit, I understand why people do it.  Personally, I preferred the passive approach.  I always had an exit strategy–a guy who conveniently fell in love with me and could help me leave.  A guy whose needs I could focus on to drown out the pain of hurting the other person.

It’s shameful to admit, and it’s so inconsistent with the person I see myself as being, the person that I strive to be.  But there it is, example after example of exit strategies in my relationship history.

In my second marriage, I toyed with anger and exit strategies, but in the end I decided that I was going to have to stay in the relationship until I could leave in a respectful way.  I had to find a way to be loving to both of us, or I wasn’t allowed to leave at all.

I am proud that I did at least honor that commitment.  But I can see why people don’t leave in this way.  It’s easier to vilify the person to justify why you’ve left.  Much easier than it is to hurt a good person who didn’t do anything to deserve it.

This is the hardest part of the empathy/pick me thing.  Because no matter what happens, you’re still going to get hurt.  To this day, it still makes me cry, even as I write this, knowing that I caused him pain.  I think I might even be sadder about it than he is at this point.

The only consolation I can find is that if you at least try to leave in love rather than hate, you minimize whatever pain is in your control.

Leave a comment

Posted in Relationships and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Friendship

Posted on December 15, 2013 by Christy Barongan
Last night we had our 2nd Annual Charlie Brown Christmas Party.  The party was named after last year’s tree, which looked like this:
 
 
This year the tree was more normal looking but my friends were more comedic, as you can see in this picture:

We even had prizes for Christmas attire:  Ugliest sweater, Most Festive, and Prettiest Sweater.  Guess which person won each prize from the picture below:

I am so thankful to have such good friends.

In my first marriage my husband and I were everything to each other–just like in love songs and romantic movies–but we didn’t have many friends.  Perhaps at some level we feared that if we told people what our relationship was really like, they would see how fragile our marriage was.

I believe that lessons are often learned from tragedy, pain, and hardship–particularly lessons you don’t want to learn.  What I learned from that relationship is that no single person can be everything you need.  And when you lose that person who has tried to be your everything, you are left with nothing. 

So I vowed never to allow myself to be that socially isolated again, and I have done a pretty good job of honoring that commitment.  In addition to playing and captaining all of those tennis teams, I also organize most of our social events and play the MC at the parties, making sure that our time is evenly spent between eating, singing karaoke, and playing board games. 

However, I am still more inclined to play the role of therapist with my friends than friend in need.  And I use all the same excuses that my clients use for not asking for help:  I am a burden, a broken record, a person whose feelings may be too much for other people to handle.  A person who is too needy, too demanding.

I’ve spent today the way I spend most Saturdays–tired and alone.  I did text a few friends.  And I talked to my brother.  And I’m writing this blog post.  So I’m trying to reach out.  But it will always be more natural for me to help than to be helped.

Perhaps whenever I have doubts about whether my friends want to be there for me, I can look at the deranged elf pictured above and remind myself that only someone who cared deeply about me would pose for a picture that can be posted for all the world to see.

3 Comments

Posted in Mental Health, Relationships and tagged , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Grief

Posted on December 10, 2013 by Christy Barongan

Tonight I went to the memorial for the student who was killed in the car accident a week ago. I didn’t know the student and wanted to have a better sense of who she was and to feel more of the grief that the community is experiencing.

Handling crises is my least favorite part of my job. I don’t do well with things like grief. My emotions are naturally very intense even at baseline, so when there’s a crisis, I shut down. I guess this is my brain’s way of protecting me from being overwhelmed by my feelings. In a way it’s helpful, since I need to be there for the students, but sometimes I’m afraid I’m so emotionally removed that it’s affecting how much support I can provide.

I do feel bad for the parents. I don’t have children but I can imagine how hard it would be to lose a child, how unnatural and unfair that is. I wonder if they will celebrate Christmas this year, and if Christmas will ever be a happy time for them again.

And I feel bad for the driver. He may go to jail for drunk driving, and for the rest of his life he will have to live with the burden of her death. I hope that he finds a way to forgive himself for what happened and find peace.

Often my friends on FB will post something on the birthday of a loved one who has died and say how the sadness never goes away. It’s daunting to imagine living with never-ending pain–a hole in your heart that never gets filled. That’s why death scares me so much.

For awhile I was really into books about near-death experiences. I think I read them as a way to be OK with the idea of death. I found comfort in reading that all of the people who went to heaven and came back to earth thought heaven was so great that they were depressed when they didn’t get to stay.

My favorite part of these books is where they describe how entering heaven is like a pep rally where all of these people, including your loved ones, are there cheering you on and welcoming you. I don’t know if you get to pick your job when you’re in heaven, but I think I would be an awesome greeter. That makes the idea of dying a little easier, too.

The biggest loss I’ve experienced so far is losing my first husband. He didn’t die but we are not in contact and he does not wish to have a relationship with me, so it’s been like a death to me.

I know I’m probably taking this too literally, but sometimes I wonder, if it’s really true that your loved ones greet you when you get to heaven, would he be there to greet me, since we’re no longer married? Or would he just be there for his second wife when she dies? I imagine that when you are in heaven you can be in two places at once and you don’t have to choose which loved ones you will be with like you have to do on earth.

Even though it’s been almost 10 years since we’ve been apart, I still miss him. We shared so much together that every day I encounter something that triggers a memory of him. But at the same time, I am happy with my life and feel fortunate that I will get to know more people than I would have if we had stayed married. So it’s possible to be happy and sad at the same. It’s possible to miss someone but still go on with your life.

I guess since we all experience losses throughout our lives, these losses just become a part of who we are. I have always felt that if I had to do my life all over again, I wouldn’t change anything, because every mistake and every loss has played a role in the person I have become.

Plus I believe that our task in this lifetime is to experience what it means to be human, and suffering and death are a part of the package. Often in therapy clients want me to take away their pain, and I have to tell them that I can’t, but I am willing to sit with them while they are hurting. I guess that is the best gift we can give to anyone who is grieving. So at least I’m getting that part right.

This is my favorite doodle because it looks like a magical land, like Oz, minus the yellow brick road.

4 Comments

Posted in Mental Health, Relationships, Spirituality and tagged , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Children, Part 2

Posted on December 5, 2013 by Christy Barongan

I babysat for my niece over the Thanksgiving break, which was tiring but a lot of fun. I never had a sister growing up but really wanted one, so it’s fitting that Sadie likes to pretend that we’re sisters. I told her about Sophie and she wasn’t phased at all. I guess kids don’t think it’s crazy when you tell them that you have an inner child because so much of their play revolves around their imagination.

Sadie has recently discovered that she’s a really good singer, so we started off the day belting out country songs and show tunes on Youtube during breakfast. The song “Tomorrow” has been running through my head for over a week now. I promised Sadie I would wake up early so the singing started around 7:30 a.m. while I drank my coffee and tried to wake up.

Then, because snow is a rare occurrence in Knoxville, we went sledding in the back yard. I was never big on sledding even as a kid so I was not expecting this to be much fun but it turned out to be a blast. I usually try to get exercise by playing tennis or obsessively counting steps, but it’s much more fun if you do it by playing, like kids do. So I counted that as my workout for the day.

After that I took Sadie shopping to buy her very first Christmas gifts with her own money.  It was sweet and hilarious to see how excited she was about it. Not only was this a good lesson in altruism, but it also taught her the value of money. By the last gift she realized that she didn’t have enough to buy a My Pretty Pony or whatever those things are called, so she asked me to buy it for her since she’d been so generous. How could I say no to that?

We treated ourselves to lunch at the Cheesecake Factory and shared the pumpkin cheesecake. Which was awesome! When we got home I helped Sadie wrap her gifts and drank more coffee. I was still really tired by then so we watched Brady Bunch episodes until her parents came home. At which point she made them open their Christmas gifts and told them that she bought them with her own money but now she didn’t have any left. They reassured her that she would probably get more money for Christmas.

I took a nap shortly after their arrival.

One of the less intuitive findings on happiness is that having children does not make people happier on a day-to-day basis, but parents believe that children make them happier to justify all of the hard work in raising them. Sort of like the principle behind hazing as a way to bond with your fraternity.

I’m not sure I buy that explanation. Having children isn’t about happiness. It’s about love. And love doesn’t always make you happy. In fact, sometimes it makes you miserable. But when you choose to love someone, you do it because you want to experience the full range of what it means to be human–even the negative stuff. And children definitely allow you to experience that full range.

I wrote this blog post because Sadie asked me to write another one about her last week but I never got around to it. Here is a picture of her modeling her sledding attire.

And here is Sophie’s drawing of Sadie and me.

 

6 Comments

Posted in Relationships and tagged , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Thanksgiving

Posted on November 28, 2013 by Christy Barongan

There was a time when I questioned whether miracles really occur.  I could not understand why God would intervene in some people’s lives but not others in a way that appealed to my sense of justice.  Now I realize that you don’t have to understand why for something to be true.

As I await my parents’ arrival, I can’t help but remember when they came to my house for Thanksgiving two years ago.  At the time, my mom was obsessed with learning how to type to prepare for the dreaded electronic medical records implementation. 

My dad was still in the midst of the worst depression he’d ever experienced.  He was somewhat better than he had been two years prior, but still a shell of the larger-than-life person I had known all my life.  Still, in his compromised state he decided that he, too, would practice typing.  I was encouraged by this, because in his darker moments he barely had the motivation to exist.

Several hours later, he asked me for help.  When I looked at what he was working on, I saw that he had been trying to log on to his email account all of that time.  I wanted to cry.  But at the same time, I admired his determination to master the computer, even though he was no longer practicing medicine and did not have to worry about electronic medical records, and even though his cognitive abilities were greatly diminished. 

I write a lot of blog posts about my affinity for challenges.  It is definitely something that has been instilled in me by my parents, whose favorite motivational poster says “Don’t quit.”  On that day two years ago I was thankful that the depression had not destroyed my dad’s fight.  He was still a warrior, albeit a wounded one.

Last year around Thanksgiving, somehow the depression completely lifted after 3 years, even though nothing had changed in his meds.  It’s as though his personality finally broke through and he was exactly the way he had always been, which was essentially in a sustained hypomanic state.  It was truly like seeing someone come back to life. 

These days, he is constantly on FB, commenting on people’s pictures and posting copies of every photo album my parents own.  In fact, the only reason he is not on FB right now is because he is on his way to Knoxville.

My dad’s recovery is nothing short of a miracle, and every time I think of him I say a prayer of thanks–even though he tells me that I need to lose weight and gives me appetite suppressants.  Actually, he read that post, so now he tells me I look good.  So I’m thankful for blogs, too!

And wouldn’t you know that my parents showed up right as I finish this blog post.  God has perfect timing. 

I even have a picture for you today.

7 Comments

Posted in Mental Health, Relationships and tagged , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Can Love Conquer All?

Posted on November 4, 2013 by Christy Barongan

My first writing assignment was accepted for publication!  Woo hoo!  I have to say, this is a lot like writing papers for English classes in college–something you wouldn’t think someone would willingly subject themselves to for a measly $2.50 an hour. 

Here is the link to the article:

http://classroom.synonym.com/can-love-overcome-obstacle-relationship-10003.html

I did not write any personal info in this article, so I will give you some background on how I came to the conclusion that love is not enough to overcome any obstacle in a relationship. 

My first husband and I were very much in love.  I’m not sure I will ever love someone else as much as I loved him.  The odds were stacked against us–he used to refer to himself as a poor, half-breed bastard–but neither of us was the type of person to shy away from a challenge.  There were many people who thought that our relationship wouldn’t last, but there were also a lot of people who thought we were the ideal couple.  We worked very hard to save our marriage, but in the end love wasn’t enough.

It was a sad lesson to learn, since I have always been a romantic.  I believed that differences in race, class, religion, and family background didn’t matter, that stereotypes weren’t true, and that even though you had a crazy childhood with lots of traumatic events, you could still have a healthy relationship as an adult as long as you loved each other.  And maybe those things are still possible, but they haven’t been possible for me.

But I’m not sorry that we tried.  I’m not sorry that we got married.  I believe that love is a gift, and there are no guarantees that you get to keep any gift forever.  Some people never get to experience the kind of love we had, and I got to have it for 12 years.  And for that I am still thankful.

And I am open to the possibility of loving someone like that again.  I am not going to close my heart off because of how painful it was to lose him.  Love may not be enough to conquer all, but it is still worth fighting for.

4 Comments

Posted in Relationships, Self-Acceptance and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.
←
Newer Posts →