Feeling calmer this evening. Not sure my heart rate has slowed to normal all day today, but... calmer. Tomorrow I'll go by the pharmacy and pick up a higher dose of Prozac plus an anti-anxiety pill - reading about the latter (Tranxene) actually caused anxiety, but I called back and talked to the nurse about it and found out it's supposedly less sedating than the Xanax, and I'll try it out tomorrow night to see about that. Called a mental health practice the doctor referred me to and left a message, and will see what they say.
Spent the evening re-watching Dan in Real Life for the umpteenth time and finishing one of the Jayne hats. Which is very, very sad-looking - I'm not sure even Ma Cobb would have done such a messy job. I've been trying to cobble them together from various online patterns, and the decreases in the one I used for this last one were not good. Next one, I'll try a different decrease approach. I have lots of cheap Red Heart yarn - most of the online pattern makers insist that Ma Cobb wouldn't have used fancy-shmancy yarn, and I won't either.
Up too late - need to get to bed, and get up tomorrow and go to work. And pull myself out of this.
Missing you on your birthday, Sweetie.
21 February 2011
February 21
Today is Jerry's birthday.
Apologies to all of you who've been concerned about me due to my radio silence lately. I've definitely been sort of shut down in the past few weeks, and have been dealing with new weird manifestations of something bad happening, mainly panic attacks. This is the second Monday in a row I've taken off as a personal day from work, and this morning I called my doctor's office, and have discussed matters with her nurse, and am waiting for another call back to find out if they want me to come in for an appointment they've set aside for me this evening just in case. What I really want, I think, is a psych referral - the counselor I saw a number of months ago was a nice woman and all, but I think bigger guns are warranted now. I spend so much time thinking "Yeah, it feels bad, but it's not really that bad, others are in so much worse shape and I mostly do fine and go to work and come home," only this morning I didn't manage the "go to work" part and the weekend didn't go real well and I actually cried the way I've only cried once before during all this, right before Jerry died, couldn't breathe, couldn't stop, felt like I was out of control and in some other odd space, outside myself almost. So yeah... bigger guns.
I thought I was doing so well. Frighteningly well. I thought, Well, I'm coping so much better than I ever expected I would. Now I worry it was all just my brain doing its coping-mechanism-thing. And that that's not working anymore.
I'm sorry for the lack of communication, but sometimes withdrawal is really the only thing I can do. In the plus column, over the weekend I got a ticket to see Sugarland in May and one to go to Huntsville the week before that for the weekend of the Huntsville All-Day Sacred Harp Singing. So I must have some sort of optimism hidden away somewhere that I can actually pull out of this thing I'm dealing with now and will want to do things in the future. Also, I've started knitting again, which I wasn't sure I'd ever do again: thanks to several guys at work for being Firefly fans, so I've been motivated to make them Jayne hats. (Google will be your friend if that last sentence sounded like gibberish to you...) I've made a hash of the two attempts so far, but I'm soldiering on and enjoying the process again.
But apparently Jerry is dead and not coming back. And I don't know, still, after all these months, how real that idea is to me. I cannot tell you all how much I do not want to be dealing with all this, how much I want a "normal" life again. I feel horrible for feeling that I don't want to be sad about Jerry's suffering and death and absence any more. But I guess that's not really it. I'll always be sad about that, it'll always be there, no matter how happy a life I manage to have someday. I just want to function, I want to be happy, I want it not to be tearing my life apart and making me feel like I'm melting down and disappearing into some sort of black hole.
Or maybe this is Prozac side effects catching me up.
So... yeah. Waiting for the doctor's office to call back.
Apologies to all of you who've been concerned about me due to my radio silence lately. I've definitely been sort of shut down in the past few weeks, and have been dealing with new weird manifestations of something bad happening, mainly panic attacks. This is the second Monday in a row I've taken off as a personal day from work, and this morning I called my doctor's office, and have discussed matters with her nurse, and am waiting for another call back to find out if they want me to come in for an appointment they've set aside for me this evening just in case. What I really want, I think, is a psych referral - the counselor I saw a number of months ago was a nice woman and all, but I think bigger guns are warranted now. I spend so much time thinking "Yeah, it feels bad, but it's not really that bad, others are in so much worse shape and I mostly do fine and go to work and come home," only this morning I didn't manage the "go to work" part and the weekend didn't go real well and I actually cried the way I've only cried once before during all this, right before Jerry died, couldn't breathe, couldn't stop, felt like I was out of control and in some other odd space, outside myself almost. So yeah... bigger guns.
I thought I was doing so well. Frighteningly well. I thought, Well, I'm coping so much better than I ever expected I would. Now I worry it was all just my brain doing its coping-mechanism-thing. And that that's not working anymore.
I'm sorry for the lack of communication, but sometimes withdrawal is really the only thing I can do. In the plus column, over the weekend I got a ticket to see Sugarland in May and one to go to Huntsville the week before that for the weekend of the Huntsville All-Day Sacred Harp Singing. So I must have some sort of optimism hidden away somewhere that I can actually pull out of this thing I'm dealing with now and will want to do things in the future. Also, I've started knitting again, which I wasn't sure I'd ever do again: thanks to several guys at work for being Firefly fans, so I've been motivated to make them Jayne hats. (Google will be your friend if that last sentence sounded like gibberish to you...) I've made a hash of the two attempts so far, but I'm soldiering on and enjoying the process again.
But apparently Jerry is dead and not coming back. And I don't know, still, after all these months, how real that idea is to me. I cannot tell you all how much I do not want to be dealing with all this, how much I want a "normal" life again. I feel horrible for feeling that I don't want to be sad about Jerry's suffering and death and absence any more. But I guess that's not really it. I'll always be sad about that, it'll always be there, no matter how happy a life I manage to have someday. I just want to function, I want to be happy, I want it not to be tearing my life apart and making me feel like I'm melting down and disappearing into some sort of black hole.
Or maybe this is Prozac side effects catching me up.
So... yeah. Waiting for the doctor's office to call back.
13 February 2011
Landmines in plain sight
I guess by definition landmines are hidden, but sometimes you see yourself approaching them from miles away. (And can I just add here that my editing brain just cannot turn itself off: here I am, metaphorizing about something very painful and serious, and I was starting off writing "sometimes you can see them coming from miles away," when I thought, "Landmines don't have feet, they're not 'coming' at all" and almost laughed out loud. What a warped brain...)
Where was I? Landmines, not hidden at all. Such as today, a Sunday the 13th. It's the first Sunday that's been a 13th of a month since June 13, 2010, the day the world for some reason didn't actually end. It's eight months since Jerry died. Tomorrow is, of course, Valentine's Day. Next day, I'm six months away from being one year away from being 50. Believe it or not, I'm pretty sure I wasn't so frakking obsessed with my age before eight months ago. But having gone from being the 20-years-younger wife to the exhausted, burnt-out widow has done that to me. I look in the mirror and see more and more white hairs, my face looks grey and drawn, and so often it looks just so bleak.
One more date: a week from Monday would have been Jerry's 68th birthday. Doesn't that look like a nice big number? As if, you know, he had a full life, I shouldn't be so sad that he didn't get to live longer. There was nothing about Jerry, except for health issues, that said "This is a man approaching 70." Yes, we knew there were twenty years between us - we knew he and my parents were born within three years of one another, we knew he was old enough to be my father - but it never was a thing in our relationship except for a source of occasional humor (he had to explain who Froggy the Gremlin was, for instance - and when he did, I suddenly remembered a Froggy the Gremlin toy that had been in my grandparents' house in Queens when I was little, I guess having belonged to my mother or her sister. I spent years trying to find a decent Froggy the Gremlin toy on eBay to get Jerry for a birthday, but never managed it). We were just us. Sixty-seven years was not enough. Knowing Jerry for twelve years was not enough. Having only ten wedding anniversaries was not enough.
And of course no matter how many years he had had, it would never have been enough. From the time we got married I told him he had to stick to the contract, that I was insisting on a Golden Wedding Anniversary. Then I upped the number and told him I wanted a marriage that lasted 65 years. Yes, he would have been something like 122 on our 65th wedding anniversary, and I would have been 101, but I demanded it. Very funny, eh?
I'm taking a mental health day off from work tomorrow. Work's gotten very weird. People keep quitting, good people, and the vibe is incredibly dysfunctional and sour. It could be a very good place to work, but there would have to be some fundamental changes made. So many people are frustrated and unhappy. Public forum, won't say more, and I hope things get at least a bit sorted out for the better, but it doesn't seem likely. I will not be the last rat on the foundering vessel, that's for sure. But anyway, I think that, given all the stressors that are piling up on the calendar this week, a mental health day is warranted.
And I'm breaking a cardinal rule this afternoon by going out and getting a haircut while in a depressive state. Can't be helped - I've been overtaken by one of those moods where I can't stand my hair as it is for one second longer than I need to - as a matter of fact, since my usual hairstylist, whom I love, isn't working today or tomorrow, I'm going to a totally different salon near my house, one I've never been to. Crapshoot out of desperation.
One more thing: thank you to Alicia for assuring me that not being able to remember my day-to-day life with Jerry is a normal thing that will change. After all these months, all I can think of still is the end of his life, the hell he went through. I can't remember what it was like to share our happy marriage every day, to do ordinary things, to fight, to argue, to laugh together, to be silly together, to listen to him mangle words in the way he loved to do. I know it all happened, I can think about it, but I can't remember it, and I can't feel it. I have to listen to him talking on YouTube clips to bring his voice to my mind. I don't know if this is supposed to be some sort of coping mechanism, my mind not letting me remember these things until it thinks I can handle them? And given how absolutely abysmal the "coping mechanisms" minds come up with usually are (great for a moment, perhaps, but lethal in the longer run), I hope I get to have my good memories back someday soon. I've gotten to the point where I know without a doubt that I want love again, I want someone in my life to love me and to love - but I want my memories of Jerry back too, I want them to be real and vivid and I want to remember him and our beautiful marriage for the rest of my life. Thank you, Alicia, for letting me know it will happen someday.
Where was I? Landmines, not hidden at all. Such as today, a Sunday the 13th. It's the first Sunday that's been a 13th of a month since June 13, 2010, the day the world for some reason didn't actually end. It's eight months since Jerry died. Tomorrow is, of course, Valentine's Day. Next day, I'm six months away from being one year away from being 50. Believe it or not, I'm pretty sure I wasn't so frakking obsessed with my age before eight months ago. But having gone from being the 20-years-younger wife to the exhausted, burnt-out widow has done that to me. I look in the mirror and see more and more white hairs, my face looks grey and drawn, and so often it looks just so bleak.
One more date: a week from Monday would have been Jerry's 68th birthday. Doesn't that look like a nice big number? As if, you know, he had a full life, I shouldn't be so sad that he didn't get to live longer. There was nothing about Jerry, except for health issues, that said "This is a man approaching 70." Yes, we knew there were twenty years between us - we knew he and my parents were born within three years of one another, we knew he was old enough to be my father - but it never was a thing in our relationship except for a source of occasional humor (he had to explain who Froggy the Gremlin was, for instance - and when he did, I suddenly remembered a Froggy the Gremlin toy that had been in my grandparents' house in Queens when I was little, I guess having belonged to my mother or her sister. I spent years trying to find a decent Froggy the Gremlin toy on eBay to get Jerry for a birthday, but never managed it). We were just us. Sixty-seven years was not enough. Knowing Jerry for twelve years was not enough. Having only ten wedding anniversaries was not enough.
And of course no matter how many years he had had, it would never have been enough. From the time we got married I told him he had to stick to the contract, that I was insisting on a Golden Wedding Anniversary. Then I upped the number and told him I wanted a marriage that lasted 65 years. Yes, he would have been something like 122 on our 65th wedding anniversary, and I would have been 101, but I demanded it. Very funny, eh?
I'm taking a mental health day off from work tomorrow. Work's gotten very weird. People keep quitting, good people, and the vibe is incredibly dysfunctional and sour. It could be a very good place to work, but there would have to be some fundamental changes made. So many people are frustrated and unhappy. Public forum, won't say more, and I hope things get at least a bit sorted out for the better, but it doesn't seem likely. I will not be the last rat on the foundering vessel, that's for sure. But anyway, I think that, given all the stressors that are piling up on the calendar this week, a mental health day is warranted.
And I'm breaking a cardinal rule this afternoon by going out and getting a haircut while in a depressive state. Can't be helped - I've been overtaken by one of those moods where I can't stand my hair as it is for one second longer than I need to - as a matter of fact, since my usual hairstylist, whom I love, isn't working today or tomorrow, I'm going to a totally different salon near my house, one I've never been to. Crapshoot out of desperation.
One more thing: thank you to Alicia for assuring me that not being able to remember my day-to-day life with Jerry is a normal thing that will change. After all these months, all I can think of still is the end of his life, the hell he went through. I can't remember what it was like to share our happy marriage every day, to do ordinary things, to fight, to argue, to laugh together, to be silly together, to listen to him mangle words in the way he loved to do. I know it all happened, I can think about it, but I can't remember it, and I can't feel it. I have to listen to him talking on YouTube clips to bring his voice to my mind. I don't know if this is supposed to be some sort of coping mechanism, my mind not letting me remember these things until it thinks I can handle them? And given how absolutely abysmal the "coping mechanisms" minds come up with usually are (great for a moment, perhaps, but lethal in the longer run), I hope I get to have my good memories back someday soon. I've gotten to the point where I know without a doubt that I want love again, I want someone in my life to love me and to love - but I want my memories of Jerry back too, I want them to be real and vivid and I want to remember him and our beautiful marriage for the rest of my life. Thank you, Alicia, for letting me know it will happen someday.
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