Long Lasting Grief. Where's the Long Lasting Relief?

I’ve read many a blog entry over the last year or so and have always been amazed, scared and a little doubting of how long the grief lasts. I would think: how could the second year possibly be worse or as bad as the first? Well – now I am in my second year - I am at 1 year and 3 months and I still feel like shit. I still feel grief very deeply. It doesn’t limit my ability to function like it used to, nor do I lose control as waves knock me over, but it is still there every day. I still feel so raw and wounded. I still feel the weight of it. It is like I get up in the morning with this metal weight chained to my body. I drag the damn thing everywhere. Everything is effort. I tire easily. Some things are just too much effort, so I don’t do them. I lay down instead. It is all so much work. All the details, all the paper work. The endless cooking, eating, cleaning, bathing. It feels tedious and pointless.

Then there is the expectation to be “over it”. This comes from my friends, colleagues, and family and even from myself. Others don’t seem to understand that I am still struggling. That the pain is just beneath the surface. That joy is a lost quality. That the future is a huge unfathomable wasteland. That the present feels unmanageable.

I actually watched the news last Friday night. (I do have glimmerings of interest in the world. I do make an effort to ask others how they are doing.) In the news is the idea some guy calculated, that the world was going to end the next day. I was shocked at my internal first reaction: relief and gratitude. Oh my god…

Someone, please tell me that it gets better: that we find a reason to live and live fully.

Isolation - It's Starting to Melt Away

It has been a very long time since I wrote anything in my blog. I have been isolating myself and hiding either in my work or my bedroom.

I have been working 45 to 60 hours a week, and then I crash and lay in my bed watching mindless tv, playing solitaire on my laptop. I do not call anyone, I do not answer calls, I do not answer emails, I don’t go out anywhere. I have been isolating myself big-time.

I went to an open AA meeting last week with a dear friend who is a recovered alcoholic. The idea being that I might get something out of the sharing. I did. It was when one alcoholic talked about the self-pity and the isolating behaviours she went through after stopping drinking and the effect it had on her life. I swallowed hard, I had tears welling up in my eyes. I related 100% to all that she was saying. I left feeling that I now need to put some of those work hours into me. I deserve my time and attention and so do others. I need to reach out and go out no matter how much I don’t want to. Why? Because I am truly unhappy shut up in my room. I truly am miserable and my lifestyle is not helping.

So here I am. I am like the bear, slowly waking and returning to life after a winter of sleeping in darkness. I am a little bit grumpy and hungry for something different than my own self- pity and grief.

Hello out there.