Category: grief

Is twelve weeks three months?

I got dinner with my friend Stephen last night, and then we came back to my house to watch a movie (finally saw Moonrise Kingdom which will stay on my list of movies to buy, and I’ll be on the lookout for the soundtrack as well). We went to Rumours East which has a beautiful outdoor seating area. I might go back just for that. The food was good, but too expensive to eat very regularly. It was a gorgeous place to just sit, talk, drink.

Anyway. I felt a little sad last night though, because I felt really pretty but had no one around to appreciate it.  I know, it’s one of those “secondary losses.” I should be satisfied that I just felt pretty, and stop complaining. Ugh, it’s frustrating that I can’t have what I want. Maybe it’s good that I come to terms with this now rather than later. Who knows.

It’s been twelve weeks today. Twelve weeks ago, Matt was still alive but knew that he wouldn’t be by the end of the day. We would have been texting about whether to go to Costco after work to get lettuce. The plan was to have veggie burgers and salad that night. I don’t think I ended up having anything for dinner though.

It’s still so frustrating to me that I have to move on but don’t want to. I AM moving forward. I’m still alive, still have a life, can still thrive and be happy with life, and can still love people. I HATE that Matt isn’t here with me. Fucking hate it. But there is absolutely nothing that I can do about that; it was his decision to leave, and I made my opinion clear as day to him over and over and over again – even minutes before he killed himself. He knew what I thought, and went the other direction anyway. It’s useless for me to fight it. All I can do now is nurse my wounds and try to heal. Oh, my Matt. It’s still surreal sometimes to think that he stuck a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. WTF.

Not sure what I’ll do this evening. I might just go home and do some drawing. Michael’s had all their canvases 50% off so I bought a bunch. Started an oil pastel the other night which needs lots of work before I ever show it to anyone, so that one might get scrapped. I’d really like to be able to do good oil pastel portraits though. We’ll see.

some ramblings

I want to be healthy. I want to feel good about myself. I need to stop spending money going out. I should start working out again, even if it’s just taking a walk after I get off work. I would like to lose weight and feel pretty. I’ve been wildly unsuccessful in disciplining myself to exercise on a regular basis, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t give it another shot. I saw an idea on Pinterest – each time you work out, you put a dollar in a jar. After a few months, if you’ve done well, you treat yourself to something nice. I wonder if that would be incentive enough for me. I would need to get some $1 bills for this….

I’d kind of like to go to Beaman Park tonight, but I don’t know if I should do that alone. The trails are usually pretty quiet. I wish Katie lived closer.

Helen gave me two bookshelves yesterday (best mother-in-law EVER) which perfectly match the one already in the bedroom (they’re all from World Market) which is making me even more excited about re-doing my bedroom. I feel like the bed is never going to ship; the estimated delivery date is something like June 5-June 23. Pretty much the whole month of June. But I haven’t started re-organizing or anything yet so I shouldn’t be complaining.

I’m feeling a little sad right now because I just looked through the June edition of Martha Stewart Living, and it’s making me want to throw summer parties and buy a farm and landscape everything and be creative and happy. This was our plan, basically. But no more. I would still love to do those things eventually but I don’t want to do them alone. Funny – as independent as I am, I adored being married to Matt. He had no problem with my independence; I think he liked it actually. I’ve had the fleeting thought that I should have changed my last name when we got married, but that never occurred to me while Matt was still alive. Oh well, it’s not a big deal anyway.

I need some goals and projects to work on. Goal can be to exercise – that’s not hard to assign. I’m still in the middle of the feather quilt that I started during one of Matt’s hospital stays last year, and I like it so I really ought to finish it. I also wonder if I should invest in some nice yarn and work on some crochet projects to sell. That granny square shawl that I made turned out so well.

So tonight I think I’m going to clean up the house, and then either do some laundry or get out my sewing. Or both. Still need to wash dishes from game night on Friday, though there aren’t too many of those. I could probably knock that out on my lunch break. Also need to get some cat litter and change the litter boxes.

Enough rambling for now.

eleven

Honestly, the past week has probably been the best since Matt died. This doesn’t mean that I haven’t cried or felt depressed; it just means that I have felt less of those things than before. I think there are a few factors involved here. I have realized in the last week or so that I still have the ability to care a lot about other people. I can love people besides Matt, and receive love back. It won’t be the same, but I’ve just been grateful for any that I can get this week. It means so much to me that I have friends who seem to deeply care about me, and I’m encouraged to see that I can care about them too. Being able to give and to receive love is a very good thing, and I’ve been glad to see that I’m still capable of both.

Another possible reason that this has been a pretty decent week is that I can tell how much I have changed in the last 11 weeks. When I read over older entries, I still feel all those emotions as I’m remembering how I felt when I wrote about them, but they’re more dull now. (This isn’t true across the board or all the time – it’s just so much better than it had been.) I’m glad to see that I have made progress. It didn’t seem like I was getting anywhere at all in the midst of everything, but with 11 weeks’ perspective I can tell that I was. It’s sad, but a good thing. Matt is not in the present anymore – he’s a memory. Yes, that’s still depressing. But time makes these things so much easier to accept and to deal with. No, my life is not what I wanted it to be. I’m not a very ambitious woman; I had exactly what I wanted in being married to Matt – except for his mental illness. But I am accepting change and trying to do it gracefully and honestly, because I have no other choice.

I bought a bed frame today. I haven’t slept in my bed since Feburary 20th, and my therapist has encouraged me to set some kind of goal for myself with regards to sleeping there again. So, to that end, I bought a bed frame. It’s shipping from Amazon so I won’t have it for a while, but that will give me time to clean up and re-organize. I’ll have to make it into MY bedroom, not our bedroom. The bedroom and the garage are going to be the hardest rooms to make “mine,” not “ours.” Yes, this is also depressing. But I have to tackle it, and I am going to.

Life certainly can be frustrating. I’m learning so much out of this. I hope that this makes me a better person eventually, though I kind of feel like it already has somehow.

Ten weeks down.

This week has been better.  I’ve spent some time with friends, and have made a couple of new ones.  I’ve kept the house clean which always helps me to be in a better mood.  I haven’t been to the bar as much – I’m just getting tired of it because I can feel it not being so good for me.  I mowed the lawn.  I bought a new raincoat.

Ryan helped one of his friends move, and she gave him a ton of her old books that she couldn’t keep because of moving into a smaller place.  Helen also gave him some of her books, and we took them to McKay’s last night and ended up with about $200 in store credit – with two boxes of books still left in my car to take back later!  It was a great trip.  🙂  I ended up with a few new books and two DVDs – didn’t go too overboard anyway.  After, we went to Cafe Coco and did some reading.  It was pleasant.

Tonight, I’m either going to hang out with my friend Amanda, or go see Jurassic Park 3D.  Not sure which one yet, but either way I’ll be fine.  🙂 

I don’t have a ton to say at the moment, but I’ve been kind of trying to blog each Thursday just as a weekly update.  Maybe someday I’ll read back over these and be glad that I updated each week.  We’ll see.

a little less weepy

Maybe the coffee helped.  Who knows.

Well, I just paid off the scooter and wrote checks to pay off Matt’s Vanderbilt bills.  Still have one more left to pay down because I don’t remember how much is left on that balance, but once I get another statement in the mail all Vanderbilt bills should be taken care of.  I think I felt my blood pressure rise as I was writing the two checks for Matt’s 2/21 visit.  I wanted to include nasty notes about how I can’t belive they’re charging me for that (apparently they intubated him when he arrived…probably nothing much else though); why would they have expected him to live with a gaping hole in his head?  On the other hand…I probably would have wanted them to try everything they could if I had been there, frivolous as I may have known it to be. 

But anyway.  Those bills are gone and I’m glad that I don’t have to look at them again.

It was a year ago yesterday that I had my little scooter accident.  I wish Matt was here to celebrate paying for the scooter in a year.  I wish he was here for everything though.

I’m reading this book called How To Go On Living When Someone You Love Dies.  I might have mentioned it here…can’t remember.  It’s really good. 

“It is not an easy task to withdraw emotional energy and investment from someone you love.  It takes a great deal of time and effort.  It means that all of your ties to that person — your needs for and your feelings, thoughts, memories, hopes, expectations, and dreams about that person and your relationship with him — all must be brought up and revived.  Then each one must be reviewed and felt.  In this way the emotional charge is loosened or defused.”  (231) 

“There are countless ways in which you can [keep your loved one alive through your own life and actions].  For example: Talking about your loved one; Acting on the values and concerns you took from him; Thinking about memories you have of him; Enjoying and appreciating life because of having known, loved, and been influenced by the deceased; Being and acting who you are because of what you were given by your relationship with this person. 

“All of these are ways of keeping your loved one alive through you.  Since he was a special part of you and vice versa, you actually are a part of him that contines to exist in the world despite his death.” (237)

Oh, life.  It’s not fair.  “In the face of all aridity and disenchantment love is perennial as the grass”; but it would seem that love is not the only thing perennial as grass.  I suppose that in the interest of looking at the glass as half full, I should acknkowledge and be grateful for the fact that as long as life will never be fair, at least there will always be love.

feeling weepy this morning

I miss Matt so much.  It hurts, all of it, everywhere.  Not constantly, but a lot.  I hate it when my mornings start like this, because it makes it harder to focus on work…or at least harder not to be distracted when I don’t have any work to do.  For some reason, I’ve been remembering the sound of Matt’s voice this morning, which is not a very productive thing to do.  Sometimes I want to go bury myself in a hole in the ground and never come out.  I won’t, but sometimes I want to.  That alternative seems better than never living with Matt again.  I had never been happier or more loved…..

9wks

Not feeling very imaginative this morning or I would have come up with a better subject line. Oh well.

I don’t have anything in particular to say, come to think of it. Just felt like I ought to write something since it’s been about 4 days…. So far this week has been better than last week. On Monday evening I got together with an old B&C coworkers, and then Tuesday evening ended up hanging out with the same coworker plus several other ones. Last night was uneventful; I cleaned the kitchen and did a load of laundry, then pretty much sat around watching Parks and Recreation first, then Wilfred second (Ryan picked Wilfred…not sure if I like that show or not…).

I’ve decided that I’m going to pay off all Matt’s medical bills (especially the ER bills from the 21st…@#$%&), and I’m going to pay off the scooter too. I haven’t decided for sure whether I’m going to sell it or not, but I probably will. Much as I like it and like riding it, I don’t know enough about it to maintain it properly I think. Plus I just don’t need two vehicles. It’s SUCH a cute scooter though. I’m loathe to get rid of it. We’ll see what happens though. Other than those bills, I’m just going to keep up with everything else and try to live off of my paychecks as much as possible.

I was thinking about this yesterday. Sometimes it makes me mad that Matt knew I’d be OK eventually if he killed himself. He told me so. And it also makes me a little mad that I knew he was right when he told me, and I remember feeling a little guilty denying it. Moving forward is really the only option that I have, but it doesn’t mean that I WANT to. And I know that Matt used his knowledge of my strength-of-whatever to help him feel less guilty about shooting himself. I don’t think that it would have helped for me to act weaker and more dependent on him, and that wouldn’t have been true to myself anyway, but it’s just another one of those things. Pointless to think about, but hard to ignore. *sigh*

Today, I have another appointment with my therapist lady. I feel like I should go into these sessions with something specific to say, but the biggest thing that’s happened since I saw her last week is the insurance money, and that’s not exactly upsetting me or anything. I know I’m not wasting her time because she’s getting paid and all that, but I feel like I should have more to talk about. Meh, whatever. I need to stop analyzing.

Just past the 2 month mark now, as I’m sure you probably know.

I actually had a pretty good weekend – I was pleasantly surprised. I had dinner with a friend on Friday evening, which was nice because it’s a friend who I don’t see too often and I was happy that she thought of asking me to have dinner with her. After, I went to Cafe Coco and TRIED to sit outside reading, but it was pretty chilly and I could only handle it for about an hour before I got too cold and had to go home. (I don’t like sitting INSIDE unless I have to – I’d just as soon be home.) After Coco, Cathy came over for a bit and we chatted and watched some Sex and the City (I know…guilty pleasure…).

I had to get up Saturday morning and take Bitey to the vet. He’s had an abscess behind his left ear for a few weeks now, and it keeps acting like it’s healing but then he’ll scratch off the scab and it gets worse. I was afraid that he’d end up getting it infected so I bit the bullet and made him an appointment. The vet said that Bitey looked fine overall – no infection, no fever or anything – but she prescribed him some antibiotics anyway, and some anti-inflaminatory ointment. And a cone. Bitey is so mad at me. It was HILARIOUS watching him try to manouver on Saturday because he kept running into almost everything. He’s getting used to the cone now and isn’t running into quite as much stuff, but he’s also been just sitting on the couch acting depressed all the time, too. It makes me sad, especially since on top of having a cone around his head, he also has to take antibiotics. Poor kitty.

The kittens are being pretty nice to him, though really they’re ignoring him most of the time (which is the norm). Here’s a picture of them cleaning Bitey’s head for him though, since he can’t groom himself at all now.

kitties

Anyway. I spent the rest of Saturday hanging out around the house and doing some weaving. Went to the thrift store and then the Brewhouse with Mar yesterday, and that was also nice. I got some small items at Southern Thrift; I thought about buying a turntable/CD player they had for $50 but I didn’t. Not sure why. Maybe I’ll go back and get it; I’ve wanted a turntable for a long time – ever since Hope moved out and took her record player. I have lots of records but nothing to play them on. Hm. Maybe I will go back and see if it’s still there today.

Anyway. The weaving is coming along. Warping the loom was MUCH easier this time than it was the last time. Here are a couple of pictures just for the hell of it.

loom

loom 2

Today I plan to get some cat food and more cat treats, refill my inhaler prescriptions, and clean up my house. If I have time leftover and no one around to keep me company, I might do some reading at Cafe Coco. When I was there the other night, I remembered why I always get so much more reading done while I’m there than while I’m at home (fewer distractions).

Anyway. Enough rambling.

eight weeks yesterday

and you know, I really don’t remember almost anything that happened eight weeks ago today.  Mom and Dad were here.  I think we went to Tammy’s at some point.  I have no idea what else.

It’s Friday, and that’s a good thing.  I’m taking Bitey to the vet tomorrow to have an abcess behind his ear checked.  Hope it’s not too expensive…I need to take the kittens to have them fixed, too.  Not doing that one tomorrow though.

Yesterday I saw my therapist lady for the third time (she had to reschedule my appointment last week).  It went fine.  She really thinks I’m doing comparatively great, and keeps forgetting that it has only been 8 weeks.  She basically told me that I need to be going out some, seeing friends some, crying some, laughing some, excercising some.  I’m pretty much doing all of those things – though not enough exercise at this point.  I’m going to try to start doing more yoga, at least to start. 

But anyway.  It continues to be good to hear from a professional that I’m doing fine.  Someone on the suicide survivors forum posted something along these lines – I never wanted a new life, but since my old one isn’t an option and this space I live in now is unbearable, I have no choice but to go toward my new life.

Yep.  Basically.  This is all horrible and awful and no fair and I don’t deserve it and I thought I was smart enough to avoid this kind of drama in my life.  But, tough shit, basically.  This is where I am now and all I can do is keep walking forward.  And that’s about all I have to say right now.

 

Tuesday afternoon

I’m having a hard time focusing today.  I read this over lunch – “What needs to be done is for them to experience their pain, express it, and reminisce about the person who died.”  This is in reference to an appropriate grieving process.  I think that I’ve been – maybe subconsciously – trying to avoid the reminiscing because it’s just so painful.  I keep wanting things to just be better, but my feelings aren’t predictable and I can’t control them.  I read a few blog entries from spring 2010 and am just struck by how normal and calm and stable our life was at that point.  I was so happy in our little life, and blogged about very normal every-day things like cooking, cleaning the house, what I watched on TV or read, hanging out with Matt, etc.  I had no idea that in three years, I would be right here, mourning and grieving for my dear, wonderful, handsome, gentle husband.  I am absolutely incapable of putting into words how much I miss him, and how much it hurts me. 

I’m at work now so I really can’t be doing this…but just needed to get it off my chest, I suppose.  The loneliness and hurt can feel so all-encompassing sometimes.