Grieving: Is it a Bad Metaphor?

Yesterday for the first time I was really angry with my therapist.

She had told me that the fact that I was angry so much of the time meant that I probably felt sad (true), and that maybe I needed to do "grief work" about my past mistakes.

What possible purpose could that have, other than to make me feel worse?

I told her that I thought that was the wrong model.  If I were really grieving (over the loss of a loved one), the "silver lining" would be all the support I would get.  True, I didn't get much of that when my mother died, but then we really didn't like each other (she wanted to control me, I resented her) so in a way it was disingenuous for me to have been miffed that her friends didn't offer "condolences".  On the other hand I think I had a right to be appalled by their lack of manners.  Sitting and watching someone die in an environment where you get no sleep and there is no food or caffeine in the house is stressful, and deserving of sympathy however much you did or did not love the person who died.  I did my duty.  The last words my mother heard were my saying "I love you".

But I know that if my partner died (a real possibility as she is 80) I would get support.  I could cry as much as I wanted and no one would yell at me to pull up my socks and get on with it.  People would understand.  I would get invitations.  I could join a support group.

I could even do these things if I were grieving a breakup, a job loss, or the loss of my home.

But about the past????

One thing that I found shocking, but telling, was how many people got angry with me, mostly at the other blogging place (which is why I ended up deleting that blog), but also on Facebook, because I expressed regrets, sadness, and anger about all the bridges I burned regarding my talent as a singer (I am talking about between the ages of 14 and 30).  About my attempts to do something now and how almost all of them have been thwarted (except that I keep singing better and better, particularly this past year).  I don't know what it says about me, or the other people involved, but I find it bizarre that people who hardly knew me (and didn't know me at all in real life) thought it was ok to give me insulting and humiliating lectures about my expressing my sadness and anger.  I couldn't imagine doing that to someone.  I have said, in person, to numerous people (mostly decades ago when I was active in 12 step programs) that I didn't want to hear any more about _________, because they had been talking about it for [a year, two years, 5 years] and never seemed to do anything about it.  But if I get bored or annoyed by someone's blog posts, I can just skim and move on, or unfriend or unfollow them.  But a lecture??? One of these told me I had no right to complain because of all the people who had suffered real tragedies (and then she went on the enumerate friends and relatives of hers who had experienced everything from agonizing cancer deaths, to loss of limbs, to seeing a relative shot).

I don't think my own personal friends would be quite that uncharitable, but as I explained to my therapist, they would not provide any kind of support system around this grieving process.  They are for the most part extremely sympathetic about my problems with my partner, my physical challenges in dealing with bad weather, even the feeling of isolation that I have working at home.  But any time I have broached this subject (except with one woman who began singing late as well) the responses I get vary from telling me to "stay in the now" (a 12 step slogan), to politely changing the subject.  One woman even said "je  ne regrette rien" in a snotty tone (this was in writing) and blew me off about the whole subject despite that she herself was a therapist.  And there are no bereavement groups for failed performing artists, I might add.

Also, what would constitute "closure"?  When a loved one dies (or you lose a job or a relationship) you grieve, and even though you may never "move on" (particularly in the case of losing a loved one who dies unexpectedly and too soon) eventually life "happens" and you get distracted, even for a little while.  Yes, things remind you of your loss, and that may always happen, but as time goes by it happens a little less.

So where is the analogy?  I am not going to give up singing.  I have worked too hard and made too much progress, and, for example, being able now, to open up my mouth and wait out a high B flat with little effort feels too good to stop now.  I have tried to shut out the whole world of "singers on the professional cusp" (the ones I feel the most competitive with; obviously I am not competing with Jamie Barton!!) whether on Facebook, my blog feed, or elsewhere (unless they have personally been kind to me), and have pretty much stopped going to hear performances that these singers appear in.

Then there's choir.  It is my anchor right now for a variety of reasons and I am not going to give that up either.  Of course the way the director behaves with Little Miss is galling.  (The Wednesday before the "Gloria" he buzzed around her anxiously asking her to reassure him that she would be there because there were only two other sopranos.  There were nine altos, including me, so we were expendable.  I fantasized about falling into a snow drift on the way there and staying there until noon but decided that that would be "cutting off my nose to spite my face".  I actually did deliberately leave the house late, but somehow managed to get there only 5 minutes after "call" and nothing had started yet.)

So what exactly is going to "happen" to move things along after I start this so-called "grieving process" anyhow?  Nothing "happens" to stay at home freelancers who spend most of the rest of their time taking care of a loved one.  And anyhow I think it would be disrespectful of people who are really grieving to use that nomenclature.

All that being said, being a dutiful patient (or "client" as they are called now),  I looked up "grief" online.  I tried variations such as "grieving process" and "grieving over past mistakes".  (All I got from the latter was an article on things one wished one had said to or done for someone who has died.)

So now I have gone from - I suppose - grieving, to brooding about grieving.

If only someone would "get"  it.  I'm not just being a nuisance or a bore.