Another Sunday evening

Off the top of my head, I can't remember how many weeks it is now since Jerry died.  It's Sunday night, it's just past 10, so it's another week gone by since his last breath... but I'd have to look at the calendar to figure it out.  Sixteen weeks?  I know that Wednesday will be four months, going by dates.  But I can't remember how many weeks.

I'm tired.  No matter how much sleep I get, I'm always tired, it seems like.  I'm not motivated to move.  I keep thinking, keep saying I should start exercising again.  I should clean the house.  I should think about the future.  I should plan things.  But I just feel so exhausted, like doing anything at all takes more effort than I can muster.  The NIH website says Prozac can take four to six weeks to start working.

Backslid in a major way on the eating front this weekend.  Lots of bingeing, and stuff I didn't really even want to eat that much.  Plan to start counting points again tomorrow.  I also still get up in the morning and take a shower every day.  I did laundry yesterday.  I'm not huddled in bed in a fetal position.

But I'm not happy.  Surprise, surprise.  Some things change, others don't.  I've managed to begin reading again, a bit, in small doses - almost done with the latest Sookie Stackhouse novel, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo finally got here from Portland the other day, for my next read.  Not sure I'm ready to go back to A Clash of Kings, which I was reading when Jerry was hospitalized and then found I couldn't concentrate enough to stick with.  Another widow book came from Portland too, Widows Wear Stilettos, which seems worthwhile, based on a quick glance-through.  The latest book that's going to finally be the one to reveal the secret to surviving this hell.  Although I suppose I'm still here, so that means I am surviving.  I need to figure out how to do more than just survive, though.  For one thing, I have to figure out how to want to.  And it can't be in the hope that Jerry will walk back in my door, that this has all been a horrible nightmare and all I have to do is wake up and life will be back to the way it should be.

Some things change, not necessarily for the better, or the easier.  I think I must still not totally buy this idea that Jerry is never coming back - am I repeating myself?  Of course I am.  I must still not buy it, because I find myself having moments in which I feel this awful terror deep inside me, moments in which I think I'm actually believing he's dead.  Feels like a howl, like the stab of a knife, like a scream.  And those moments pass, and then I'm back to my more numb state, which isn't as numb as it used to be, but is still an existence in which some extremely basic truths are just out of the frame, a little fuzzy, something hovering in my peripheral vision, and I'm aware they're there, but I just am not really looking at them.  Not wanting to.

Why is his wedding ring on a chain around my neck instead of on his finger?  What kind of strange time is this in which his glasses have been resting there on the nightstand for almost four months now - how is he making do without them?  His briefcase is in the dining room next to the secretary desk he made - why isn't he taking it to work every day?  Why are his work boots sitting there too, with mine?  Where is he?

If I repeat all this over and over again, will it start to make sense?  Will it start instead to lose its meaning entirely, the way a word does when you look too closely at it?  Like the word "dead" - if I just keep staring at it and thinking about the letters and repeating it over and over again, will it stop meaning that I'll never see him again?

Tired.  So tired.