How to Get Through a Miserable Season of Life

I was sitting on the front porch of a friend’s farmhouse. There were three of us, sipping iced tea and talking. Cows grazed lazily in a broad pasture. Late afternoon sunlight spilled through shade trees in the front lawn. The blooms of potted plants fluttered like tiny skirts in a warm breeze. We could have been the subject of a Norman Rockwell painting, only I was beset by wave after wave of misery.

The loss behind the misery, or more accurately grief, is not something I can share in a blog. Not now, anyway. It did not involve the wreckage of any inanimate object, however, such as a house or car, or my having been diagnosed with an incurable illness. My cat still marches about, demanding to be fed and cuddled multiple times a day, and my hair, although graying quickly it seems, has not begun to fall out. None of this mattered or mitigated how I felt.

One of my friends gave me a pleading look. “Just try to have fun this weekend,” she said. She meant well, but it was like being asked to magically erase a scathing circumstance, a loss from which I cannot seem to escape. In the worst of times, having fun is impossible.

Still, there are ways to control misery, so it does not run pell-mell over the entire landscape of your being, mainly through recognizing it for what it is: a fierce inner beast with states of rest and arousal, that will, we all hope, eventually slink away.

The weekend ahead surely held the promise of fun. I was spending a few days at another friend’s river house, an old brick colonial hemmed in by an expanse of lawn and landscaped beds, from which the Potomac River stretches like a vast silver mirror, undulating, alive and quietly reassuring. On my last evening there, she and I sat in Adirondack chairs, tucked gardenia blossoms in our hair, drank wine and ate cheese so rich it melted in our mouths like butter. And in that setting, the misery retreated, made a few mindless circles and flopped down in a sleepy heap.

It arose again with a vengeance in the middle of the night. Such is the behavior of misery; it is predictably intense when the only arms to wield against it are a cup of herb tea and a mildly interesting book. These are hardly sufficient means with which to beat back a misery-beast. 

‘Fun’ may not be an achievable state while wrestling with serious loss. Distraction is, though, and in distraction, relief can be had for a while. Distraction is what my friend at the river could offer and what I could accept and experience. Assuming this more conservative definition of fun, not lighthearted pleasure and amusement, but rather a temporary tie down of the turmoil, I can offer three suggestions for having it, using the word, at least, as an acronym:

1. Find ways to stay in the present. I’ve discovered that simply reminding myself of what I am doing helps rein in my thoughts. Looking back at what you had or forward at the grim prospects is feeding the misery-beast treats. You must, of course, do a certain amount of this: we are not in full control of where our minds take us in a given moment, and the business of grief requires an honest accounting of the loss. But try to make the relays back and forth into these thoughts as brief as possible. If you must dwell there for a length of time, call a friend who is able to be a sounding board—in other words a compassionate friend of few words—and pour your heart out to her. Don’t try to manage the beast at its most savage all on your own.

2. Understand that friends are trying to be helpful when they offer misguided advice. Teach a class? Maybe later. Go on a two-day hike with a 50-pound backpack to meet new people? Very funny. Adopt a puppy? Definitely not. Assign these suggestions the deeper meaning of a sincere desire to see you once again able to have honest fun. People “get it” only in broad brushstrokes. To others, you are an impressionist painting at best.

3. Notice where you fit, in relation to those who are not so well off. I am miserable, I’ve admitted, but I am not starving, homeless, friendless, addicted, abused, oppressed, imprisoned or broke. The only constant is change, and things could, in fact, change for the better, even if I were any of these things and especially since I am not. There is nothing to be gained from wallowing in the envy of people who’ve got what I lack.

Let me close with a few words to friends-of-the-miserable: If you must tell your friend to ‘have’ something, make it distraction, not fun. Also, admonishing your friend—pointing out her own culpability in whatever has happened or telling her to get over it—will lead only to despair, and despair is dangerous. Stay in a careful, empathetic place, and forego false optimism, justifiable pessimism and the awful temptation to point out positives: misery seldom feels like a blessing in disguise.

You can’t fix whatever is wrong, but hugs, prayers, tea, dinner, phone calls, text messages, soft old sweaters (even in July), the offer of a day or night away from it, walks—these are all good. Affirmations are good, too. As I left my friend’s river house, she draped an arm over my shoulder and said, in the voice of the ill-treated nanny, Aibileen, in the movie, The Help, “You are strong, you are smart, you are important.”

“I think the line is You are kind,” I said, “not strong,”

“You are strong,” she insisted. Kindness is never wrong, but sometimes strength is more necessary.