In your life, what events have you found difficult to explain?

Unfounded decisions that totally wrecked the direction of my life.

I find it difficult to understand how people who come together and co operate and help one another selflessly in difficult circumstances can at other times argue and fight each other to a standstill over something completely trivial.

I find it hard to understand how someone without the experience or really the knowledge can tell another that he could not have experienced that. It amazes me there are those that think they have absolute truth and it can be no other way.

My whereabouts.

My change of career.

None. I got past “difficult to explain” years ago.

There are questions that I don’t even bother trying to answer. What would be the purpose of burning daylight trying to answer the unanswerable. Dinosaurs lived and dinosaurs went extinct. Humans will also become extinct at some point. Why dwell. You only have your lifetime to make a difference. Make it count. Set goals. Achieve your goals. Make as many moments of your life as meaningful as possibly. Engage in personally fulfilling activities. And stop worrying about explaining life and death or war for that matter. These are a part of the cycle of life. You have only to look at the life of other species around you to know this is true.

Alzheimer’s. My grandfather was 1 of 5 men in his Army company to survive WWll- he helped rescue two of the other 4. All his civilian life he was strong and active, when he needed a bypass at 81 years old he survived that too, healing with flying colors within a few weeks when the surgeons had given him less than 10% to survive just the surgery. It’s the Alzheimer’s that did him in, so frightening for him when he was in dementia and humiliating/degrading when he was coherant.

I had a tough time explaining to my daughter why her grandfather committed suicide. He’d always seemed very happy to her. A couple years later, I found it difficult again to answer detailed questions she began asking about how he did it.

My visit to the cemetery after my mom’s death.I couldn’t find her grave due to the snow on the ground and was starting to get alittle upset.
I had taken my normally high energy dog with me,and as I looked in vain for my mom’s grave,I noticed him lying down about 20 yards away,whining.When I walked over to him,he was lying on my mother’s grave.I can’t explain that one.

I can’t explain the beginning of the AIDS epidemic very well. It was exhausting and painfully sad to lose so many friends in such a short space of time and, more than 20 years later, I really don’t have the vocabulary to explain it. I also find it difficult to explain to young people the reaction of the White House and others in positions of power who could have taken action, but chose not to. I feel their disbelief when I tell them about my client in Ohio whose family came up from Tennessee to get him (all 87 pounds of him) and made him ride home in the bed of the pickup truck. He died en route.

Something difficult for me to explain that I have only tried to explain to a few people is my passions, loves and, desires.

This is too much like the therapy I’m not ready to go to.

Well, I quit thinking about this a couple of years ago, but the failure in my marriage really bothered me for a longtime. Not now…passed that! I’m going on my 4th year of being single and I’m never been more at peace with myself and with others. So, sometimes difficulty in the beginning maybe a good thing in the end.

My upbringing. I’ve never met anyone who had a childhood even remotely like mine. I can’t explain my family, I see other families and they seem bizarre in their normalcy. I mean, my mom raised us with pictures Ganesh, the Dalai Lama, Buddha, and Jesus all sitting on our bookshelf surrounded by prayer beads blessed by monks. And I was raised Catholic. She took us to different countries, we as children lived like a backpacker in another country, no rest, just exploration.

I think with all the experiences I had before I was 15 I don’t even know how I came about. I can never fully explain why I don’t relate to almost anyone my age properly. I don’t feel like we grew up in the same reality, the same world. I’m baffled by others who have lived next door to me and were the same age.

I’m learning how to explain my life and who I am, and the ‘why of me’... I couldn’t ever articulate my background so I decided to force myself by writing it.

So, I’m working on a book. At 24, a memoir seems necessary.

Bleh, I could try and edit this to make it more clear but again, I’m struggling with the whole thing myself. Wade through it if you can.

@lucillelucillelucille Dogs have an amazing sense of smell. My own dog ferreted out where his sister was buried and would go there and lay atop the ground where she was buried and whine. I’ve known other people to take their pets to the cemetary with them and have had the experience of their dogs laying upon the graves of their deceased partners whining. Even in decay they recognize the scent of their beloveds.

I think it is difficult to explain my upbringing as well. I am not certain how events in the past have affected my memory and how much was attributed to other random factors that I don’t remember. There is a large portion of my childhood that I do not remember, and I would like to know if that is normal with everyone or if there was a reason for it.

Why I wimped out and did not take the stand one last time and fully clarify my side of a lawsuit.
The judge and jury both seemed to like/believe me and the jury was responding negatively to the parties who filed a nuisance suit against me. My lawyer wanted me to go back up and be questioned by my co-defendant operating pro se and then cross examined a second time. I panicked and asked him if he could do it in closing.
So I won, but not every charge. And didn’t get lawyer’s fees covered.

The recurrence of the song ‘The Only Way Is Up’ by ‘Yazz and The plastic Population’
When ever I hit rock bottom, the song seems to pop up on the radio.

Oh, and how that cup moved on that ouija board!........

I haven’t. Explanations should be like tearing off a band-aid. We are the only ones who make it difficult.

My struggle with health issues. Medical science is not able to cure me, and many think I am exaggerating I think.

I find it difficult to explain why I have been spared time after time after time, dodging bullets in Vietnam, surviving car wrecks, parachuting accidents, etc., and now fighting off cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, and brain anuryisms. Statistically speaking, I should have died YEARS ago!

Breastfeeding. It is one of those things that is so hard to explain the bond unless you experience it yourself. Before I had my daughter I though people who put up BF pictures were a bit odd and those who nursed babies who could “walk or talk” were a bit odd and so on. Now I am ashamed that I ever felt that way. It’s like once you do it yourself and experience it something clicks and you just “get it”. Now I hear other people who think it’s odd to do all those things and I am the advocate for a mother’s right to do all those things. I feel like I need to keep typing more to explain myself but like you said I just can’t explain it.

@RedPowerLady You’re back! I have not seen you here in a long time

@JLeslie I usually only have time to get on FB or my new-mom site, but you know I love it here so it’s still on the front of my bookmarks, lol, but this is a general question so we’ll probably be flagged for this, one reason I get frustrated here sometimes

@RedPowerLady I have 4 children, all of whom were breast fed, I will never be able to experience (being the Dad) the bond created by child birth or breast feeding, although through my own parental bonds can understand how it must feel, and to be honest, I’m quite gealous of my wife.

I don’t really know why I’m responding to your post, I think I just felt the need to congratulate you on the bond you have with your daughter :-)

Why we have moved so many times for what seems like no reason at all. We just do. It’s annoying and disappointing.

Hard: what I think; what I feel; why I fight with myself over everything.
Impossible: why I pull away and lie when things get too personal.
Unfathomable: loss of loved ones
Nothing. Talking’s so easy. Everything makes sense…

@RedPowerLady Oh, yes… lovely post. I second that. I’ve become fond of saying that ‘Breastfeeding is/was my superpower.’ because I really felt superhuman being able to feed my baby…. but it’s perfectly human. That IS hard to explain.

September 11, 2001.

People who want you to forgive and believe in them only after they’re caught screwing up when you know they didn’t give a flying f**k about what they were ruining while in the midst of screwing up.

I found it difficult up until the last few years, now that these issues are being openly discussed, to explain to some people that just because my abusers have personality disorders and are mentally ill, that didn’t 100% excuse them for their behaviour toward me as a child/teenager, especially since other adults at the time were urging them to get help for their troubles. They were “troubled”, not “insane”.

@aprilsimnel: I agree with you. I really believe we all still have the option to tell people, “no, I don’t wan’t to deal with your destructive illness/addiction/compulsion/disorder”.