My therapist wants me back on antidepressants. I see her points. It's a week since I got back from my trip, and I've spent most of it unable to leave my house except to visit the mailbox. The only time I've left so far has been to go see her on Saturday. But I'm not accomplishing what I want to get done in the house, either. I went upstairs yesterday to try to tackle the bedroom that Jerry used as an office and den, and pretty soon the pile of stuff I was working on revealed photos from a colonoscopy he had in 2005 (a few benign problems, but nothing to worry about), and that was the end of that. I did find a bunch of photos of happier days, at singings, in the house, in the yard, and I find it astonishing to see how carefree and happy I look in them, how totally different I am from the stumbling, confused, shellshocked person I feel like today.
Anyway, when I first started seeing my therapist, I was already on antidepressants, and in our last session she pointed out that she'd never seen me like this before. Like what? I asked. "So emotional," she said, and she wonders if I can handle this without pharmaceutical help. It's so strange to hear that sort of thing, and other things as well, friends who say I'm more like myself now that I'm not on the medications - from inside I don't experience such vivid differences. I know I felt numbed out to a certain extent, and I don't feel that way now. I do realize that I'm not finding the motivation to do what I think I want to do, that I'm back to isolation now that I'm not going to work every day, but what the bottom line for me is, I was sad then, and I'm sad now, and just as before, it feels like this will never end. I have no experience with this kind of sadness that can help me know what will happen, that can give me hope that things will get better. I can't know if "this will pass," since the cause of it, Jerry's death, Jerry's absence, Jerry's never-coming-back, will never end. I realize that my only hope is to deal with that cause differently, to somehow manage to accept it and... what? Not continue to wish so much that it wasn't the case? Manage to get the hideous suffering he endured out of my mind and not dwell on it? Realize that countless other people have survived this loss, this final and permanent separation, and gone on? That "'tis common; all that lives must die"? I want to. I want to stop feeling like my life has ended when it hasn't. I want to be able to live, if that's what I have to do, and find happiness again.
I just have absolutely no idea if I can, if I will.
And just by the way, for those who haven't seen it: Shit People Say To Widows, via Widowed Village.
Will it bring you any comfort if I tell you that in many ways the second year was harder for me than the first? I wasn't better, and I couldn't see myself getting better, and I thought that I should be better.
ReplyDeleteThe numbness was gone, the protective blanket of shock was gone. I was feeling everything that I couldn't allow myself to feel that first year. I'm pretty sure that if I had allowed myself to feel it all at once, I'd have been comatose.
For me, and for a lot of my widowed friends, things started to even out at some point during the third year. I started to find my equilibrium again. You'll make it, you'll find your way through. Maybe not as quickly as you want to, but you will.
Remember -- you know what I'm going to say, right? -- You will not always feel the way you do now.
Wishing you a measure of peace for the day...
I wish I had some wise words for your but I'm new at widowhood. So accept my hugs and know that others care.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your post.
ReplyDeleteYou write "I have no experience with this kind of sadness that can help me know what will happen, that can give me hope that things will get better."
So true.
This hasn't been easy. There isn't a road map. Even if there were such a map, would we follow it? Or would we keep looking behind, hoping we could turn back? And if GPS, frequently voicing "recalculating...."
Tomorrow a third year will begin for me. I think Alicia's previous writing is correct that the second year is harder. I found it so.
Lately life without my spouse calls me. To make room in my life for more, I am trying to answer that call.
Not easy. It is like going on an unknown adventure, that's for sure.
I just finished reading the book "Widow to Widow" and found it helpful. It's also comforting. The author mentions archiving the past, etc., and I think this can be a way to make room and be in the present. Although going through photos, etc., will not be easy, it's occurred to me I must now do this and do so efficiently. A weight will lift and my hope is it will be easier to go back and look at them someday as a past part of my life.
A past part.
Not easy.
Letting the reality be that my spouse is gone will never remove him from my heart. Letting go of memories will allow me to make room for more. Letting go of things will let me see what the empty space can hold.
We were loved well and loved well. We can love and remain lovable.
Did I write adventure?
Virtual hugs come your way.