"The show must go on."
But where else can it go? When my mother died I went straight to work, after visiting with my aunt, and my sibling and father for a few hours. Why? Well, I was needed at work. Pay wasn't the issue because this was unpaid ministry work I had been involved with for three years. People were kind, supportive. I was exhausted but not exactly a weeping mess. I did take some days off to rest but then got right back into things. I cannot think of a more appropriate way to grieve though death and loss affect different people differently. Take some time for myself, but focus on getting back into the pool while I still know how to tread water.
Every single challenge, difficulty, tragedy and disaster that I have experienced I have dealt with in more or less the same way. By getting on with life. Not always easy. Part of my recovery from post-traumatic stress disorder involved me returning to places where I used to go walking in the years before and leading up to the traumas that hobbled me for a while. I would retrace these walking routes every day for weeks as a way of mapping my brain and re-habituating my mind to how I was before I became ill. It was a very effective way of returning me to the grounded reality I knew before the shit hit the fan.
Instead of finding a new advocate to help me get my disability claim I decided that I didn't need it after all. I had a good employment counsellor, looked for a job, found one, got fired after a year, then two and a months later got into training and found new work in peer support that I am happy to say I am still doing ten years later. I didn't have time to be ill. Self-pity was and still is a luxury I cannot afford.
Was I really ill? Yes. Did I need time away from everything? Within limits. I was on social assistance, basic assistance and also working casually as a house cleaner and showing and selling some of my paintings. And for those of you from the provincial government who would like to know if I declared all my earnings while subsisting on your piddly five hundred ten bucks a month, please don't waste my time asking stupid questions!
We always need time to rest, get our bearings and figure out what has happened to us whenever we are sideswiped by life's big black wrecking ball. Someone might need a good night's sleep on the day of his mother's passing then go straight to work in the morning because that's what pays the bills and also helps maintain a semblance of normal life and routine. On the other hand an experience of sexual assault could send someone else spiralling down into mental illness and she might feel lucky if she can even do volunteer work after years of therapy and treatment and might never get back to work again.
To every aphorism there is going to be an exception. In the meantime, the show must and does go on, even if the show is nothing but...a show.
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