It seems my life 'after' has revolved around a hole. Weird right? Yeah. But, it's true. When you didn't ever wake up there was just this space, this big HUGE empty space left in my world. Picture the deepest hole where once, you had stood. Do you see it? Well, I woke up in that hole, and spent hours and hours, days, and months trying with everything I had in me to climb out of it. It was exhausting, disorienting, overwhelming and excruciatingly slow. Sometimes I would almost make it to where I could see light but got yanked back down time and time again. The only thing to do was get up and try again, so...I did. And I did and I did and I did.
I'm not sure when I climbed out, but I think I did. At least, and I don't want to say this too loud in case I get pulled back down (I'm having enough trouble with up, I don't think I can handle down again) but I don't feel I am in a constant climb anymore. Nope, now it's more like a circle the rim kind of feeling. I seem to hover just at the edge of dark and light with 'one false move' just laying in wait to push me in.
It's all just so fucked up. I mean what the hell is this crap, this living after loss shit. A manual comes with EVERYTHING...how to strike a match, how to use your blender, how to set up your phone etc, etc, etc. But death and how to do it...nope! And I know there are mountains of books out there, I've read many, but really, and I mean this in the sincerest way possible...THEY SUCK! All the words, all the best advice, all my best intentions to do it 'right' mean nothing. When it hits you, you are no longer in control. No matter how well you want to do this thing...tough. You will do it however 'it' says you will do it.
So yeah, I think I made it out just so I can circle around it. Yippee! And let me just say...walking this path with a full set of tears ALWAYS at the ready is harder than you might think. It's like trying to drive in a rainstorm without ever using the wipers. You can't see shit and you know the edge is near and you must stay away from it and the stress and pain and overwhelm is all just too, too much.
Dear God it's just too much. All I want to do is open my eyes and walk across the room in a straight line towards normal rather than shuffling through a minefield with tears hanging on my eyelids. It's no kind of life...
Part 1- Oh Jesus, how is it that words like you wrote strike every single note I play on my own internal piano?
ReplyDeleteAll except maybe the circling of the rim of the hole. I don't think I can be as generous yet in my perspective of the hole.
But why do we call it a hole even? WHy do we use the words we do? And how is it that the words you type strike every note with me but when I might try to explain the same to someone who has not fallen in the same kind of hole they cannot get the depth no matter what. They can't even get close to the rim. What is it about that death hole that until you have to crawl in it you cannot appreciate the depth to which it takes a person you know? I didn't before now.
And I too think of you often along with others I have walked in kindred with and for that I am breathing less alone. I share in your walk. It doesn't stop me from wanting more though. It hasn't given me the reason to want to share life with others yet. Why? I think I know why or at least I am coming round to it.
I don't want the commitment. I don't want the responsibility. Because along with it comes the possibility of the hurt. And I cannot, I repeat, I cannot stand any more of any kind of hurt. This has been the most painful, exhausting, traumatic length of time I have ever spent wanting to kill myself. And why? Because I no longer have someone to share my life with. I am alone without the only person who accepted me for all of who I was. With everyone else including my parents I always felt a certain sense of reservation. Qualification. Not with Greg. Never.
I needed to be accepted wholly. 24/7. That's the other part of this. It was 24/7. Oh now I have a sister who lives nearby but it is when she has time for me. Or a good friend who calls when it is convenient. I don't understand that as worth. My brain does not compute that. Not because my brain wont accept it but because my heart doesn't.
It is a continual conflict in my brain as to what is this worth. Obviously not in value of dollars but in quality of feeling. Im just not sure I can find the good. I vacillate between the bad and worse. I've yet to really experience good again.
Part 1- Oh Jesus, how is it that words like you wrote strike every single note I play on my own internal piano?
ReplyDeleteAll except maybe the circling of the rim of the hole. I don't think I can be as generous yet in my perspective of the hole.
But why do we call it a hole even? WHy do we use the words we do? And how is it that the words you type strike every note with me but when I might try to explain the same to someone who has not fallen in the same kind of hole they cannot get the depth no matter what. They can't even get close to the rim. What is it about that death hole that until you have to crawl in it you cannot appreciate the depth to which it takes a person you know? I didn't before now.
And I too think of you often along with others I have walked in kindred with and for that I am breathing less alone. I share in your walk. It doesn't stop me from wanting more though. It hasn't given me the reason to want to share life with others yet. Why? I think I know why or at least I am coming round to it.
I don't want the commitment. I don't want the responsibility. Because along with it comes the possibility of the hurt. And I cannot, I repeat, I cannot stand any more of any kind of hurt. This has been the most painful, exhausting, traumatic length of time I have ever spent wanting to kill myself. And why? Because I no longer have someone to share my life with. I am alone without the only person who accepted me for all of who I was. With everyone else including my parents I always felt a certain sense of reservation. Qualification. Not with Greg. Never.
I needed to be accepted wholly. 24/7. That's the other part of this. It was 24/7. Oh now I have a sister who lives nearby but it is when she has time for me. Or a good friend who calls when it is convenient. I don't understand that as worth. My brain does not compute that. Not because my brain wont accept it but because my heart doesn't.
It is a continual conflict in my brain as to what is this worth. Obviously not in value of dollars but in quality of feeling. Im just not sure I can find the good. I vacillate between the bad and worse. I've yet to really experience good again.
OOPS--- supposed to be:
ReplyDeletePart 2-I have no children so that makes it hard. I have no faith in a religious icon but that is old news. I have been studying physics now and I do think there is something much greater in a natural sense that we have no idea of but it hasn't overcome my internal struggle.
When I think of how you lost your husband and best friend it blows me apart. I mean there is no good way to have to shake hands with death but your loss is just mind blowing. I mean how could the universe possibly have thought that this was something you should withstand after the fact. Seriously. Even knowing the feelings you have now I cant imagine what it must be like to visit that moment in your head. I know what my moment is like and when I go there it belies sanity. Yours is just like the universe picked you up and spit you out into little chunks like little pebbles at the shoreline. How could this be? Why the intensity? I question my own intense moment and then bury it so I can remain standing.
Right now (well, for two weeks today) I have been doing nothing. Reading online, eating little, sleeping and watching tv. I feel like a total slug. I am trying to psyche myself into getting anything at all done as there is plenty to do. Like today. I could go and take a shower. I could start listing my stuff on Etsy. Hell, I bought enough of it during the past year to choke a horse ( I called it my retail therapy, at least this way I can recoup something versus paying a psychiatrist). I think I know in my intellectual self exactly what is happening to me and the couple people who have remained close enough to me to watch this would agree. It's my heart that I buried. I don't even have one little stem cell of it. He was my knight. My crucible. My life force. I knew him since second grade, said no to a marriage proposal in senior year and we found each other again ten years later. I simply don't know what to do now. When I buried him, he buried me.
So I guess I will get up and take a shower as I need some hot water to soothe the joints which are now atrophying since yoga was shelved the day he died. I just don't care anymore Kristen. I want this all to end. Its not so much suicidal as it is just a total wearing down of my spirit. Nothing left. I'm hunting for that which doesn't even exist. Kind of fatalistic.
I know, I know it all...sadly. All of it. And right now, after a week of complete and total anguish for far to many reasons, I can offer no words of help. I wish I had the answers and the spark to ignite a sense of comfort to you. I read so many blogs where the posts are filled with insight and positivity and joy and 'life'. I don't know how they got there but I am so not. I try and I try, but being alone seems to be taking it's toll on my psyche. My brain is like a termite chewing away at itself. Tears are as regular as breathing. I have no idea who is staring at me from the mirror anymore.
DeleteSo, yes, sadly I feel you all to well. And well, I'm so sorry for your pain and what you go through each day. I'm sorry because I don't know how to help.
I did want to say that I think you should start Yoga again, I think it will help you tremendously. I walk 4 miles a day and it's just about the only thing that makes me feel at all alive.
Thinking of you...Kristen