There’s this article I read a while back that I’ve shared in a number of places because the”Ring Theory” is incredibly useful for navigating any number of traumatic events. I recommend reading the actual article, but here’s my quick, inadequate summary: There’s always someone, or some group of people at the center of this traumatic event and everyone’s proximity to that center of the circle guides the way in which they ought to manage their grief with one another. (That is, immediate family might be the closest, cousins one or two rings out, etc. You could, theoretically, draw a giant Ring Theory map of people and their relative positions.)
The center of the circle gets to dump their life-is-so-unfair feelings any which way they damn well please. Each rung out from the center must direct supportive thoughts and feelings in and only unload their negative feelings further outwards. To use the analogy as first presented, someone on the first circle (a spouse) can tell someone on the next circle (a friend) that the patient looks rough and it was challenging for them to see the patient like this (negative, somewhat selfish feels out) but not the other way around (negative feels in).
The person at the center must always be deferred to in issues of this kind, while also acknowledging that there are varying degrees of suffering to go around. If someone you love has suffered, it causes you suffering because that’s how love works. There are certain people in our lives whose suffering is deep, painful, and personal for us.
It makes a certain kind of sense that one who has had violence inflicted on their life would seek peaceful, tranquil paths in coping. As one who is grief adjacent, however, I have found that there are feelings of unspent violence. A special kind of anger brews, in part because the things you’d like to say, the speech you’ve written and re-written in your head, cannot be uttered if it runs contrary to the peace sought by the center of the circle. Your grief management is not allowed to exacerbate the suffering at the center.
The trouble is, of course, that grief doesn’t necessarily care if it’s making you selfish. It doesn’t really care whether or not you like the process it puts you through. It knows you hate it and it gives no fucks. (Actually, it gives no fucks because it is not sentient, but that’s not really the point.)
What do you do when you when the story that’s eating you up inside — the one you want to talk to everyone about so that you can dissect it and process it and make it make sense — isn’t yours to tell? That’s a genuine question for which I have no real answer. I know, I’m doing blogging wrong. This is the part where I explain how I’ve come to be serene and selfless and set aside my feelings to take care of the people that I love.
I’ll let you know when I pull that off.