8 months - Hoping

So now it is 8 months. I was hoping that this grief stuff would get easier as the months went by, but it seems to be getting harder.

I am trying not to isolate myself. But I do have the tendency to do so. I cloister myself in my bedroom with the TV and my laptop almost every evening. I play far too many solitaire games on the computer. I avoid my homework (I'm a teacher). I rarely buy groceries. I eat too much fast food in my car.

I am progressing in a few areas, though. I get to the gym once a week now on a regular basis. Twice per week is the next step. I take vitamins occasionally and I am now getting the laundry done weekly. It all seems to take so much effort.

I am still struggling with self care. I still am not interested in the world. I miss Dave more and more and I feel more and more alone.

Hope.

I keep hoping that I will adjust to life as a single person. Life alone without a partner/spouse. Life without my best friend and companion.

I keep hoping that I will start to feel better. I feel that most people feel and think that I should be "okay" by now. That I should be more or less over it. Some acknowledge that this is the year of firsts. Some are tired of my depression and sadness. I can get tired of it as well. It is all so tedious. It feels so self-centred, so self absorbant. But I have no control over the waves of grief. They hit me like a wave, or they build and build while I suppress and then gush out. The sadness is an invisible cloak that covers me daily.

All I can do is hope that some day I will feel whole again, or at least more whole. That some day the world will hold interest and that day to day activities will seem less arduous and trivial.

Hope.

It didn't work for Dave and I last year. We hoped our asses off, hoping that his body and the treatments could beat the cancer. We had to have hope. Without hope, life was desolate. Our oncologist thought that we were too hopeful and not rooted enough in the reality of his impending death. We couldn't go there.

Hope.