The weather, and your companions
personality shifts and eras of grief, i think
I don’t think personality is static. Your life is too long (hopefully) and too much weird or insane shit can happen. It’s odds-on a good amount of your life experiences will shift your personality in some way.
I’m experiencing a shift in my grief right now that I’m having a hard time describing, and it got me thinking about personality and how it’s shifted for me over the years. If the smaller pieces of your personality are weather and larger, more influential and long-lived characteristics are climate, my weather is chaotic right now. Shifts in weather patterns over a long period of time are climate change, but it’s hard to tell if a weather shift is indicative of a climate shift. The only way is to give it time, unfortunately.
The smaller, more weather-like parts of my personality climate zone have shifted significantly over the years. I used to hate horror movies and haunted houses, but somewhere along the way in my 20s they became a key part of my media consumption, especially this time of year.
No, these days I don’t turn movies off because they’re too scary or violent. These days, I turn movies off because a character is about to have multiple surgeries and I don’t want to know how that ends, or a character gets engaged but is sad about it because both of her parents are dead. That has become so difficult for me to watch that it feels like inviting a brain worm, and I don’t want to have anything in common with RFK.
The main weather-y personality shift I’ve noticed in this new phase of grief is an uncomfortably heightened sensitivity. At a work thing awhile back, one of my colleagues gave a presentation that was meant to be all about corporate values. For some reason, she decided to spend the whole presentation talking about her happily married parents who are both retired and living their beeessst fucking lives and wasn’t that just the cutest thing ever?
At the time I had to sit through this presentation, it did not help that it was my first time around people who weren’t my family since my mom died.
I did not have it in me to be happy for someone ribbing her dear old dad in his golden years. No, I went back to my hotel room, called my husband, and told him all about it. I vaguely recall yelling about how it must be fucking nice to have parents in their golden years, but did she really need to spend 20 minutes bragging about it in front of god and everybody?!
In retrospect, I’m sure her story was totally innocuous. It’s funny the things you find yourself unable to tolerate while grieving.
I have had similarly strange little squalls in my personality these 10 months, just in various stages. It’s been a really weird year. There’ve been some really high highs this first year without my mom. My wedding comes to mind. That was honestly the best day of my life so far. I’m a very firm believer in the best is yet to come—but I gotta call a W when I see one.
There have also been some really low lows in these first 10 months. Dear reader, I hope you don’t have to bury anyone you love for a long time. It’s fucking brutal. The internment part, specifically.
When I look in the mirror right now, my reflection swims in front of me. I don’t really see a clear picture. It’s too stormy. I know that I am supposed to be the rock upon which the surf crashes, but it’s difficult to see the rocks at this level of wave activity. Despite that, I do see a few anchor points.
I am married. I am extremely proud of the partnership, life, and love my husband and I have built and continue building every day.
I am a sister. My rowdy sibling group of 6 now means everything to me and I think about them constantly.
I’m still an enthusiast. Don’t ask me how. Believe me when I tell you sometimes I’d feel less and be less enthusiastic if I could. There’s always an SSRI to accomplish that, I guess, but I did a full decade on those and I think I’m good to do 10 years off of em at the moment.
I’m still an enthusiast. It feels like a constant companion. It’s something that makes me believe in at least some immutability of human personality.
I think there’s a whole other piece on why people love to comment on my enthusiasm as if they think it’s a huge ugly mole but they want me to think they think it’s a beauty mark1. There’s at least 1200 words hiding in that sentence.
But for now, I’ll just say this: maybe the next time you want to point out someone’s enthusiasm with raised brows and an awkward smile—just ask yourself why you’re implying that numbness or stoicism should be the norm. God, I actually think the worst part of the human condition is feeling the need to quash someone else’s excitement.
I truly do not wake up every day and choose enthusiasm and excitement. I can’t help it. I see something cool a software I like can do, I have a fangirl moment online. I see someone’s beautiful garden on a walk, I entertain wistful gratitude for the human tendency to give to the earth, and her graciousness to give back.
I see someone walking their dog and talking to it, and I giggle at the infinite cuteness of the human-animal connection. I join a wave of skiiers bombing down a hill, I bask in the exhilaration of sharing the human need to pursue excitement and adrenaline. I go to a wedding, I cry happy tears because oceans rise and empires fall and humans have a desperate need to love each other through it all. Cause, effect. Cause, effect.
I know more than most that life is profoundly difficult and unfair. I also know that the world is strange and funny and humans are absurd and adorable and amazing. There’s evidence everywhere you look. I see it every day. It throws sparks at me and I catch them. I can’t help it.
Life is stupid, and I like it a lot. People are weird, and I love them.
I hope I never lose this part of myself. I am grateful it has been my companion this long.
See you next week.
You may be asking yourself, who’s they? So far at my current job, 3 people have made this comment thinking they’re so original. At my last job it was 5 more. In my social life someone literally commented on it in a wedding card four weeks ago. I think people mean well when they point out how enthusiastic I am but it usually comes out condescending.