social quotient
Reaching Out by jmtimages
If there is such a thing as social quotient, I score rather low on that. I am probably in the 5th percentile or something like that.
Back in school, on the last day of the final examinations, hordes of students would surge to town, pouring into theatres to watch a movie, or combing the malls for retail therapy after weeks of study (and performance) stress.
I went to the second-hand bookstore, lugged home a pile of novels, curled up and read. I have always been the rather (in)famous anti-social bird.
After Ferdinand died, my social quotient plunged. Crashed. Failed to register on the scale, because I totally dug a tunnel southwards and went into hiding.
The only way to know that I had not wiped my neck with a sharp blade was that I was writing, spewing all thoughts and emotions out into cyberspace, emptying my grief unbridled.
And, it took me a long time to crawl out of my little dark hole.
At one point, I felt I better be out. My girls need the sunlight, they need a social life, in some form of guise.
But being social was so hard. Talking to other people, I keep making mental footnotes like--
I can't believe I am standing here talking, my son died.
I can't believe I had a stillbirth.
But, you know, my son died.
How can babies die?!
I am not normal, even if I can stand and talk, do you understand?
::
I've never ever been the life of any party, even though for years my horoscope kept insisting that if you would just invite me to your party, I'm gonna kick it up a few notches at least.
Still, I do not consider myself a difficult person to be with. I am usually civil and pleasant, and don't bite too often. (Really!) I do enjoy being social, and (dare I say it) can be fun to be with.
I know for some, keeping with the social life they once had helps with the grieving/healing. It allows the support network to be available, it makes one feel alive and still be part of the fabric of society.
For me, I just want to rip the thread that is me right out of that fabric that is society and announce, with a wave of a black lacy handkerchief, "Forget I ever exist." I feel like I wanna turn my back upon society, upon life, and just be a vagabond, traveling to the farthest corners of the world, dragging my tattered heart in a quaint and worn leather bag. I no longer wished to participate in life.
But, how is that possible?!
It just is not, unless I check myself into some remote mental institute and spend the rest of my days forgetting my name, drooling strained spinach out of the corners of my mouth, rubbing dirt into my hair, and basically just waste away until my body decides it is time.
So, slowly, somehow I became "social" again. And I will admit, sometimes it helps. To just participate in life, be useful from time to time (when I first held a door for someone, I felt... alive), interact with strangers. Instead of just mumbling to the cashiers or pretending to be busy and not want to talk, I reached into the space that contains my heart and give it a squeeze and focus on being attentive to people I talk to. I mean, I really wanted to know about their day. And if they went beyond the usual "Great!" or "Wonderful!" and complain about a leaky toilet or having to be on their feet all day, I listened, I empathized and that made me feel more alive. Even though none of that had direct relation to my grief, it made me feel less disconnected and my heart became enlivened, even if only for a little bit.
I am curious about how others are doing and what excites and bothers them. I like to be able to interact and share my thoughts. But being a bereaved sometimes handicaps that. I still keep making mental foodnotes of My son died, I had a stillbirth and sometimes the mental footnote keeps ringing in my head as I proceed with my social life. There seems to be always this tension between wanting a sense of normalcy and desiring an acknowledgement that one is not exactly normal.
I know my social quotient will slowly go up, by virtue of the primal need to be social, by virtue of my children's needs, and I hope, that this scar in my heart that had made me raw in social situations will one day become a glowing light that shines compassion and deep empathy when I one day become a more normal social animal again.
In our deepest moments of struggle, frustration, fear, and confusion, we are being called upon to reach in and touch our hearts. Then, we will know what to do, what to say, how to be. What is right is always in our deepest heart of hearts. It is from the deepest part of our hearts that we are capable of reaching out and touching another human being. It is, after all, one heart touching another heart.
~ Roberta Sage Hamilton ~
And you? How do you do? What's your social quotent, were you a social maniac before, or were you more of a hermit? How did babylosthood affect your social life? What was hard about being social again? How did being social help? What was the first social event you chose to participate in, and why, and how did it go?
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Time has helped. I'm two years out now and back to pretty much the same level of sociability as before the pregnancy. But man was it hard for a while there, trying to act like a human being when the only thing I felt like was a deranged, emotional monster.
Even now, almost 11 months on, I keep myself hidden most of the time. I can handle a couple of friends here, or I can lunch with friends one on one, but I avoid big groups, especially when there is going to be someone there I don't know. Or people I don't know very well. whow know my story but have absolutely no idea what to say. So of course they say nothing. The biggest social gathering I have been to in the last 11 months was my grandfather's funeral, if you could call it as such. Everyone there was of course deeply sad about the loss of my granfather, even after illness, even at age 90. And of course I was too, but I was still more sad about my baby. I had some painfully difficult conversations with people that day. I was screaming so loudly on the inside. I really do feel like I have two heads sometimes.
I also have not yet returned to work after my loss - whether or not people think that is right or wrong, it has definitely been right for me. And now, I still peer out my window each day and make sure it is safe before I go out and check for the mail, as I don't even really want to talk to my next door neighbours.
Everything about me changed after Hope died. And this has been one of the biggest things for me to wrap my brain around - that I no longer enjoy the company of others like I once did. That previously I did feel like I fit in, now I feel like a total freak who doesn't belong in any type of social circle - just the online social circle of babyloss Mamas. Pretty sad really.
Losing our twins has changed that. I feel that in situations I don't have the will or desire to put on a facade, I don't. If I don't feel like forcing an aquaintance, or a conversation, I don't. I have decided to give myself that. I tell people what is really on my mind.
In the first days after their death, I oscillated between wanting to scream "MY BABIES DIED!!!" in the middle of a grocery store , and wishing no one knew. I enjoyed visiting other cities where I was safe from familiar faces. I could smile without feeling judged. I needed the relief of taking a break from my reality. Yet, when I was around people I knew, I physically hurt if trivial conversation came up. "How can they think about anything else right now?"
The first social event? A new years eve party 2 months later. It was okay. People were very respectful but didn't avoid the topic, which was good for me. Come to think of it, it was surreal. I should have been 8 months pregnant. Instead I had 15 lbs. to lose and nothing to show for it. That's when we all want to go to a party, right?
7 months later I am regressing. I need more quiet. I keep late nights---somehow taking comfort in the dark. I now have 20 lbs to lose and I don't care. I don't know, sometimes I feel I am going about this all backwards...
Since then, I don't tell people until I've known them for a while or I'm very drunk. And though it's been five years, I still feel like it's the big thing about me that I want people to know, but there is no good way to present the information. I feel dishonest with them, with myself, with Ben, in not telling them. I have so many acquaintances who have no idea, and I hate it. I feel everyone who knows me, in any way, should know.
Funnily enough, though, it is Ben's death that in some ways has pushed me through my introversion and I find I no longer care about making a fool of myself and I speak up in groups in ways I never did before. I offer my opinions, raise my hand, let people know what I think and feel. I just don't tell them about my dead son.
Or, in random social moments, I'd inflict the news of what happened to almost test people around me, to dare them to step back. Most often they did, or stared at shoes, which gave me a chance to be right about the world. Yeah, I know. Sucky of me. But that's just what I needed, sometimes. And then when I least expected it, someone wouldn't break my gaze, and they'd express something true and thoughtful and kind.
That was such a beautiful post, Janis, and a wonderful quote.
xo
After: recluse.
I used to tell people after I lost my first baby that I really didn't feel like socialising, but if they insisted, I'd ask them to keep the group small (ie. max 6 people or so). But noone ever really listened to me. They kept inviting me to "small" events and then I'd get there and there'd be 10 or 12 or more people there. And I'd retreat further within myself.
Noone realised what an enormous effort it was to go "out" and socialise. They still don't.
I've become more of a hermit since my second baby died. My friends have stopped calling. They don't know what to say any more and they don't know what to do with me any more.
At the moment I'm happy to be a recluse with just my husband for company.
And then I kicked them all out. I had to be alone to explore my grief and my loss. I had to see if I could survive. I had to see if I wanted to survive.
I could. I did. Not easily, not without buckets of tears, not without wanting to scream, not without... you know. you know.
I went to a free concert in a park two weeks later, something that had been on our schedule before Gabriel died. My husband, a couple friends, and about 6000 strangers. I cried when they played their sad songs. Probably more than would have been strictly appropriate, but I didn't care. My husband and I held each other.
Six weeks after that, I went to another concert. I enjoyed it, but I kept thinking, "I would really rather be home with my six week old infant, thankyouverymuch."
And that's how it went. Even now, six years later (I can probably stop adding that now, huh?), I think, "If your big brother were here..." when I'm out with my girls. When I'm with my extended clan of a family (on either side) I sometimes see my phantom son, running with the other children.
I would say at first, I withdrew. Although I don't think I plunged into a hole or out of sight. Not that I didn't <i>want</i> to. I just didn't. Then I resumed my normal level of socializing -- which wasn't all that high to begin with, but still. Normal, for me. I had the thoughts in the back of my mind; I sometimes cried in public, and I didn't care; I updated people who didn't know. I don't think I was trying to be normal, or prove anything. It's just what I did.
I will say, I immediately quit my part-time job as a receptionist as a hair salon. (Hey, freelance writing is a tough gig, financially.) The last thing I wanted to do was repeat my story 50 times a day. Quitting that job allowed me to get to my normal more quickly than otherwise, I think. I can still remember days of weeping, uninterrupted.
ciao,
rpm
But like a few people have said, I have that dark vein that runs through conversation. "Yada, yada, yada, dead baby, yada, yada, yada." The filter keeps up most of the time, but when it doesn't the people in my life cry with us. The majority of the time we laugh and enjoy life in the moment, for what it's worth.
I was the person that now makes me want to quit facebook-I would update with my new ulstrasounds, I put up pictures of the twins' nursery.
During my two weeks in the hospital on bedrest, I wanted people around. I wanted to hear they were praying for me, thinking of me, I wanted to hear them tell me everything was going to be fine (even though, deep down, that feeling told me it wouldn't).
The second I went into labor, I was SO adamant-NO PHONE CALLS. NO VISITORS. Only my mom was allowed in. They kept bringing me post-it notes with people who had called. I didn't want to look. I didn't want to read the sympathy cards. I didn't want to know.
I wanted to be only with my husband.
It's getting a little better-I've seen my closest friends and cried it out with them. I've let them distract me. However, I refuse to go anywhere by myself. I just need my husband with me-the grocery store, the library. If I'm alone, then what will I do when someone asks me a horrible question? I feel like I want to be alone, but I feel like I need protection.
I don't at all feel like myself. I don't want to be a crazy lady locked up in my house for 20 years....but I do!!! I do want that!! I'm having a ton of anxiety about going back to work in the fall. When the babies died, they called all the students (all 800 of them) into their homerooms and told them and then had the guidance counselors in the auditorium for those kids that wanted to talk about it. I had 800 kids trying to help me name the twins. They all wanted to touch my belly. They saw the 20 wk scan pics.
This is getting way off topic in a way, so I'll stop. But yeah, I definitely am not the same social wise...
Oh, and I probably talk way too much about my hoohoo at parties.
Then, our daughter was stillborn and our normal pattern of staying home went to the extreme. We have two friends here... two. We had no social network to catch us... nobody to really trust. We only had each other, and that was pretty much the first 6 months.
None of our best friends from back home have visited... and we can't really ask. So now we can't really call them, either. It's a weird, painful, separation from pretty much everyone who knows us. It feels, though, like our failure - not theirs.
Our last ditch plan (if all else falls apart and the baby we're so close to having dies too) is to disappear off to China. We won't be able to communicate, we won't have friends. But instead of it being our fault, it will be China's.
After: Extreme Introvert
19 months out: trying ...failing but still trying.
And I've never been extremely social, but I used to be able to fake it for a good cause. I've reached the point where I can pretend to be social again, but it takes so much energy now that I really prefer to be a homebody whenever possible.
I also find it easier now to be social with the people here who did not know me before. The ones who have nothing to compare the me now to.
In a weird way it's so much easier to be around people who don't know at all. Sometimes I think it's weak and almost an insult to Sadie's memory.
Social interaction still exhausts me, so I take it in small does. I stay home a lot and I very rarely invite people to my home. We're breaking out of our shell a bit this weekend by hosting a very small party for the 4th of July. We'll see how I hold up. :)
Peace.