Biology demonstrates that both allergy and immunity originate from the same events, but one will allow survival and the other will cause a reaction that ranges from painful to deadly.
It is now quite obvious that instead of having developed an emotional immunity to shock, loss and grief, I've developed an emotional allergy.
In nature, the difference between an allergy and an immunity isn't clear. They both develop from the same mechanisms, only in one person an antigen will produce an immunity, and in another person the antigen will become an allergen, producing a hypersensitive response that might in fact kill them.
The emotional inflammation I experience each time an unexpected shock/change/loss comes around has now reached the potentially toxic level. It just occurred to me only yesterday, when news of another friend's death over Shabbat reached me - the second death in a week of a strong, spiritual warrior woman in Israel - that this just isn't going to stop.
I need an emotional anti-inflammatory that I can use when feelings get out of control. Because this doesn't look like it's going to ever stop - I'm going to keep losing people I love. Not necessarily every week as it's been lately, but intermittendly and with regularity for the rest of my life, until either there's nobody else left, or I myself am the one who leaves others behind.
I've reached the tipping point where denial no longer works to keep this reality at bay. Denial itself creates an invisible and yet completely tangible shadow that looms over everything, and the more the denial the more the shadow grows, until it engulfs everything.
Denial is also what manages the emotional inflammation, the hypersensitive response to grief and loss, denial is what has worked for me for a long time but now the side effects have in fact cancelled out whatever usefulness denial ever had as a way to circumvent emotional anaphalaxis.
Seeking the secret to turning emotional allergies into immunities for the sake of survivial!
