Does not getting out of your pajamas all day count as not getting out of your pajamas all day if your pajamas last night happened to be sweatpants and a henley, and you did get out of bed and clear out two entire rooms full of tools plus do laundry, clean part of the bathroom, and bake a peach cobbler?
(First thing I've baked since before Jerry died. Another first taken care of. Yup, cried while preparing the cobbler.)
I've been looking up counselors on the Blue Cross website. If nothing else, I need to figure out how to sleep decently. Plus I'm beginning to wonder if my ongoing stomachache of the past several days isn't actually stress-related IBS symptoms reappearing.
It sure seems like I'm on schedule, according to a bunch of things I've read. They all say there's no predicting an individual's journey through bereavement, but then they give generalizations for what often happens, and a quick Google brings up this, as an example: "As the death becomes real, people tend to fall apart. Everything feels out of control, disorganized and unpredictable. People feel like they must be going crazy especially if they think they should be feeling better. Nothing is as it was and it feels like it's getting worse instead of better. This typically kicks in 3-6 months following a death. For some it will be getting better toward the end of the first year, but for others it will last much longer." (From http://stagesofgrief.weebly.com/)
Going by dates, it's a week until the three-month mark since Jerry died. So yeah, right on schedule for everything to start being harder and more painful. Oh hooray.
You were ubber productive - be proud of yourself! Even if you did stay in your pajamas all day it doesn't matter - I clean in my pjs too!
ReplyDeleteI do hope you are able to get the sleeping thing taken care of....how hard that must be. Are the nightmares still here or is it now just you not being able to sleep?
I'll stick around even if you start going crazy....you'll make it through!
I was determined to "do this on my own." But around the 5-month mark, after soldiering through the holidays, I realized I couldn't. I think it was the night I walked around the family room in tight circles for half an hour, making sounds like a wounded animal, and gnawing (literally GNAWING) on my hands. I called both my doctor and a grief counselor the next day.
ReplyDeleteGet whatever help you need to make it through.
-- Wishing you a measure of peace today
I thought your contrast the other day between the fact that you are able to go on without Jerry and your feeling that you don't want to was a point of entry for working on the letting go (or, if you prefer, the disentangling) process -- which can be scary, and I am all for guides and counselors and coaches along the way. I keep wondering how much your "want" piece is related to what you think Jerry would want.
ReplyDeleteI have the impression that the dynamics of your marriage were very different from mine and that your belief system is very different from mine. I give you a lot of credit for dealing with the kind of loss you have with the tools at your disposal.