At the squealing, shuddering, slow-motion end of my last relationship, my then-partner looked at me with a mixture of what appeared to be disgust and disappointment, and remonstrated, "Oh Kate, don't be bitter." Immediately, I felt like a child being reprimanded for bad behavior, for indulging in a coarse, despicable emotion that had no place among the wise or the mature. I had coughed up a tight-throated comment, both snide and resigned for which I was being chastised. Wishing to retain some semblance of self-respect, I gathered up the little wounding shards of my agony and sighed, weakly faking a smile, trying to make myself look brave.
At first, for months, the thought repeated itself, "Kate, don't be bitter" and so I was not. Instead, I was awash in my own living colors. I was vacant, raw, tremulous, a blur of myself. I lost 15 pounds and still could not eat. Bread turned to ash in my mouth, soup tasted like bile. An acquaintance casually told me not to worry about it. She said that I was too busy digesting the past, and resolving the present to take anything into my body. She said that the feeling would pass, and that my appetite would return. But I felt as if something wasn't working. In dealing with loss, I was forcing myself to be gentle; I was taking the blame; I was practicing compassion; I was actively understanding, but I was empty, edgeless, skinned. I was raw and I felt ill. It occurred to me that because I was having a hard time digesting the past, I couldn't savor the moment. Intellectually, I knew that life was too short to be wasted.
In an effort to return to a more balanced self, I began seeking the help of Naturopaths and healers because though part of my problem was my body, the other part appeared to be rooted in my emotions. I went to acupuncture and was silently ministered to twice a week for two months. I read about tinctures and supplements. I wanted my strength back and somewhere in my research I happened upon the uses, both modern and ancient, of bitters. Immediately I took notice because I was still trying to ward off my own emotional bitterness. That bitters are used medicinally struck me as funny at first and then later as profound.
In my studying, I learned that bitters have long been used in folk medicine to aid in digestion. From everything I read, it appeared that bitter foods might be the remedy to my diminished appetite thereby solving some of the physical symptoms of my malady. I found that mustard greens, radicchio, wormwood, endive, arugula, dandelion greens, chamomile tea, calendula flower, licorice root--all of these were part of the ancient food-wisdom associated with digestion.
I read that, now, because so many modern-day diets are deficient in bitter foods, these important plants are prescribed as potent tinctures to remedy what more or less can be described as pain in the gut. Bitter tinctures ostensibly allow people to make use of the food traveling through the intestine, to absorb what is useful and be rid of the rest by increasing the production of bile in the stomach, healthy acids, necessary for digestion.
I began to think of my former relationship as a heavy meal full of the wrong kinds of food from which I was now sick. I thought of my desire for some form of sweetness to finish it off (a sure sign that something is missing), and the terrible lack of satisfaction I felt. I thought of my body's own wisdom when, all those months ago, it turned to bitterness as a way of digesting hard facts. And so, I have come to believe, bitterness has it's important place in our emotional lives, and it applies to all loss: Bitterness is sometimes necessary to digest indigestible emotions. Bitterness gives one the space to move on, to swallow that unthinkable thing and begin the slow work of chewing on the hard facts of our losses.
It appears that early people knew something of the matters of moving on, of passing through agony of the gut by tasting a little bit of bitterness. It seems right to me that the natural, external world should parallel the internal, that to pass through what is causing your emotional gut to wring itself out, to knot, might be the small dose of bitterness that allows you to say, "He wasn't worth it"; or "He's dead to me"; or to allow yourself to laugh that sardonic, hard, little laugh, that this might allow you to create space between yourself, and the hurt.
Since the loss of my pregnancies, I have revisited the notion of bitterness, of its danger and it's usefulness. I have spoken to other women who are waging a battle against their own bitterness, or are trying desperately to hide it, or are being chastised for it. It occurs to me again with a sort of clarity: emotions are like ecosystems, they are beautiful and balanced when they are most diverse so, of course bitterness has it's place. But, you can't be only bitter. Too much of anything is poisonous, it robs the body (or the ecosystem), of its fine balance, its complexity.
Even sweetness, a life of pure pleasure can lull a person into a sort of over-feasted torpor, a half-sleep that knows nothing but the desire to continue feeding. Similarly, bitterness alone for too long will corrupt one's view of the world--it's true. But, experienced in small doses (as bitters are taken medicinally) acknowledged as part of the process, I believe a little bit of bitter can help heal, or at least help begin the process by making the indigestible digestible so that you can once again savor the sweetness of the world.
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