Scared

I am just feeling like a big mess. A big, raw puddle of nerves, sadness, pain, longing and despair.  I am not ready to work. I'm not ready to pretend to be ok. I am terrified and I hurt, all the god damn  time. I feel crazy. I feel small. Incapable. Useless. Terrified. 

I visited my brother's church today. I sobbed through all of the songs... they all reminded me of him.

I don't know how to be alive anymore. I hate waking up in the morning.  The only peace I feel is at night, when the darkness matches my mood. 

My kids start school tomorrow. I start work Tuesday. I see my pain management doctor friday. My soul is pleading: Please let me be ok. Please let me handle it. Please let me find a routine again.  Please help me keep my kids safe and happy.

I'm surrounded by love and support and I still feel so alone. So lost. So broken. 

Please. Just, please.

All The Things

Summer is almost over. So far, here is how mine has gone:

80 bazillion trips to the emergency room.

Days upon days of laying in bed, or, if I'm feeling especially sassy, laying on the couch.

Complete and total nervous breakdown.

Cycling through doctors who a.) Don't believe me b.) Don't care to try and help me and c.) Think that I enjoy birthing a stalactite through my pee hole every two weeks.

Battling suicidal thoughts. Like, daily. The internal monolouge telling me that I am a waste of space,  worthless and undeserving of grace is loud and terrifying.

Isolating myself from the people I love, simply because I can't even stand to be in my own skin.

Constantly having to break the few plans I did try to make because the angry weasels that live in my kidneys decided it was time to party.

Gaining weight while simultaneously having absolutely no appetite.

Doing absolutely none of the projects or creative pursuits that I was looking forward to getting done.

Becoming increasingly agoraphobic, to the point that going anywhere by myself is extremely difficult.

Yeah. Things aren't good, but there are good things happening.  I enrolled in and will start college classes in a few weeks.  I'm double majoring in hospitality management and health care administration. I have 28 classes to go until I get a piece of paper that I hope will allow me to be self sufficient and maybe not have to spend 16 hours a day on my feet.

I'm in outpatient psychiatric care with a team of people who are really helping me to face & deal with the emotional trauma I've experienced. It is helping, little by little.

I've found at least one doctor who is compassionate,  caring and seems excited to learn more about the disease I have. Though he is limited in what he can do for me, he has gone to bat for me and pushed through red tape to help me get the care I need.  

My relationships with my family have grown even stronger. My kids are ok. I am honest with them about how much I am struggling & hope I am setting an example for them in self care and growth. I'm leaning heavily on the help I have.

So this is where I am at. I know I am alienating people,  people who only want me to be ok. But I can't - and won't - pretend.  I am not ok. I will be someday and that someday may be in a year or it may be in 10 years.

40th

Tomorrow Jason would have turned 40.

I miss him so much. I don't know what to do... how do you celebrate a life cut too short? How do you give the day meaning when that person is no longer there?

He never liked fuss. Never wanted a big to-do, though I always ignored him and did it anyway. Secretly,  he liked it. He was just like that, stoic.

So I will cry again. I will lament & wail & weep and hope that in the years to come celebration may outweigh despair,  even just a little.

Walking Through Grief

I'll be honest.

For a while there, I thought I had it figured out. Under control. I was sad, anxious and terrified all of the time, but as long as I didn't open up too much, didn't dig very far beneath the surface,  I was ok. Managing.

When Jason was ripped out of our lives,  I lost myself. But I thought one day, she would just magically come back. That fog of shock kept me putting one foot in front of the other. At first I did everything you're "supposed " to do. Therapy.  Support groups. Writing.  Talking it out.

But the pain doesn't end. It mutates, endlessly evolving faster than my feeble brain could keep up. And after awhile,  my natural defense mechanisms  kicked in.

Put up the walls. Slide on the mask. Pretend everything is ok. Don't give into the tears, the fury, the raw agonizing pain. Just keep going. The less I thought about him, the more I refused to let myself feel... the harder it became to feel anything.

And then, 16 months from the death of my love, my best friend, my missing piece,  the cracks began to emerge. Panic attacks.  Nightmares.  Flashes of memories buried away, so painful I literally gasp for air and sob.

Terrifying thoughts. An overwhelming desire to not have to feel anything, no matter the cost. Overwhelming exhaustion.  I find myself inert. Unable to move, no interest in anything beyond the walls of my bedroom. Hiding from the world. A phone call takes too much energy, a trip to the grocery store requires days of psyching myself up. I don't like leaving my house. I don't want to talk to anyone. How can I explain the enormity of the pain? How can anyone even care?

I barricade myself. I don't care if my kids rot thier brains playing video games all summer... at least then I know they are safe. Safe in our sad house.

It doesn't help. The pain bubbles through. I'm cracking, crumbling and I am lost. It's all too real. Why now? Why do I feel worse now than the day he died?

Because it's hitting me. He's gone. Forever. This nightmare happened and nothing I do will ever make it right. It will always be wrong, there will always be someone missing.

There is no way to get around this. No way to slip through. If I want to heal, accept and let go... I have to feel this. I have to walk through it. I have to mourn. I have to face the hand I've been dealt. I have to fight.

I am lucky. I have a lot of people who love me. And I'm letting go and accepting help. I have to put my hands in the air and surrender to the pain, lean into it. I hate it. I hate everything right now.

But I'm going to do the work.  Wish me luck.

Rain, Rain

I am heavy. Heavy heart, heavy mind. Wallowing,  probably. Fighting,  definitely.  I thought surely the sadness, the bleakness that I felt after Jason died was unbearable... that it was the worst I could possibly feel.

Little did I know that despondency,  utter & raw grief,  does not relent. It lays in wait, threatening to envelop me at every turn. For every step I take toward acceptance I am pushed back into this numb, apathetic - actually, pathetic - state of despair. 

It is maudlin,  coarse. It is making me rough. It does not stop. There is no relief in the bottle or the pill, it sucks the joy from me every single day. I cannot lose myself in anything anymore. 

I wonder if it will kill me. It feels as though it must. Surely this much pain cannot be borne without consequence. 

Breathe. Open your eyes. Count out your hollow blessings. Someday it won't ache so much. Someday you will be free. Someday you won't want to disappear anymore. Someday you will live again.

Keep pretending.  Keep imitating life. Keep your small hopes burning.  Keep feeling the hurt.

16 Months

I read a blog post earlier today written by a man who has just been diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. It was well written, heartbreaking and utterly familiar.

He spoke of clarity... the unique & brutal shift of perception that occurs when you face your own mortality. The things that matter,  the shift of things that fall away, suddenly completely inconsequential.

How easy it is to forget that shift. How easy it is to let the crap pile back up, to let the little stuff start to matter again. How quickly the big picture becomes more important than the day to day. How easy it is to not be present.

Being present means no irritation with slowness. No "just get through this drive with your family and then you can get back to all the other crap that occupies your days". Your brain. Your life.

Being present is letting that stuff go. It'll be there later, it always is.

I haven't had clarity in awhile. I haven't been present in even longer. If anything I've spent most of my time actively avoiding it. The big picture stuff clouds my brain too easily. It gets to be too much and then I shut down completely in inaction,  paralyzed by the enormity of my responsibilities and needs.

What is important is every day.  Are my children safe & fed? Are they happy? Did we have a good conversation today? Did they let me into their head, do I feel calmed? Knowing they are growing and thinking and learning and coping?

We've passed our second awful father's day. It was less  brutal this time. There were tears, there was emptiness... but there was also joy. And memories.  And love.

It is still so hard to look at pictures. And I wish I would have taken one every single day.  I have some,  from near the end, that no one will ever see but me and our children,  when they are older. They are  still beautiful,  but I can't bear to look at them now... just like Jason could not bear to look in the mirror for long at the end. My heart swells with love and longing and pure pain when I am reminded of the man I lost and love still.

There is a shift happening,  something that comforts and scares me at times.  I dream about Jason,  a lot.  In most of these dreams he is healthy and smiling, quietly watching. Nobody sees him but me. Sometimes he comes back to me, but only to tell me he is sorry for being gone so long, that everything is ok. He gives me a thumbs up ad his goofy smile a lot. He never actually speaks, but I hear his voice in my head. I remember these dreams when I wake up, in detail. I am choosing to take this as a sign that he is ok. That he is happy for me and loves me always. I don't really know or care if it is a gift from beyond or a figment of my subconscious mind... I'm taking some small comfort from it. It's all I have.

I am not fine,  not healed.  I never will be completely.  But I am moving forward. At a snails pace maybe, and with many stumbles in the road. But I'm still going.

Mother's Day

I have been very, very busy. Which is all good, until it isn't. With life marching on at a whirlwind pace I've been pushing down sadness and putting off grief... and grief is something that won't wait for a convenient time to knock you down.

This is my second mother's day as a single mom. And I honestly forgot it was even coming up. Working in the world of food service has usually meant I am at work on that day anyway, as I will be on this one. The kids were asking me what I wanted this morning and I told them  I don't want anything (except for them to clean the house, which was met with uproarious laughter) ... but that isn't quite true. I want them to have their father. I want him to see how strong they are, how compassionate they've become. I want him to be there when they succeed and when they fail. When they need a hug or a stern talking to.

That is impossible now and it breaks my heart.

I miss Jason so much. I've had a particularly bad day, crying in my room. Feeling lonely and abandoned and pitiful and angry. Because sometimes those moments hit and I just have to roll with it. I just have to let it happen. I don't need to fix it, but when it hurts like this it is hard to share. Hard to ask for help, hard to talk it out. I have my people, who let me be and lift me up. Remind me I'm doing it and that this is healing and sometimes it ain't pretty.

Most of all, I have my son and my daughter.  I get to be their mom. I get to remember the moment they were born, that amazing terrifying larger than life moment when your heart expands and your world recenters itself on the little being in your arms, created out of your love. All the boo boo's I've fixed,  all the times I've wanted to tear my hair out and ask the universe who exactly thought it would be a good idea for me to be in charge of raising healthy, happy kids to be healthy,  happy adults. I get to see my husband every day... in his son's laughter, in his daughter's logical thinking. I get to remind them they had a dad who loved them more than anything and tell them all about him. I get to remember him through them. If I do it right, they will feel him in their hearts as long as they live.

That is my gift from him.