Journaling Through Grief

     After my husband passed away, I held it together until after the funeral, then my sister, Pookie, got an earful from me as she held me in my bed. At first it started with just fun memories, as the three of us used to go out together before I had kids, and after. Then it moved to memories that were just of our family unit. We giggled through tears, and then the sobs of despair came next. The sobbing that follows the realization of permanently losing the love of my life. The realization that I no longer have a partner to help me with our kids. That there is no longer someone to tag team with in regard to giving our kids "the talk" and teaching them how they should expect to be treated or how they should treat their respective partners.

    Then she came up with a brilliant idea: journal like you were writing to him.

    It took me a few weeks to start writing to him. I decided to date the entries I wrote to him, so that anyone reading it would know when the respective timeline of events. Sometimes I only write once a week, other times it's once a month, but I usually write several pages, front and back. I write about any difficulties I have with the kids, anything exciting, just anything that is typically in a journal, except it's written like a letter to him. 

    I don't know if there is really a heaven or hell, as I'm agnostic, but wherever his soul is, I hope he's comfortable, especially after so much pain he endured his last few days.

    Listening to some songs makes me cry, sometimes ugly cry, sometimes into a panic attack, sometimes softly into a beautiful memory. I get asked why I don't just change the song; it's because the song wasn't an issue until halfway through the song and I suddenly started paying attention again. By then I need to just go through the motions and "get over myself". Occasionally I hear the beginning of a song and I can change it before the singing starts, so it doesn't hit me, but I still get a little in my feelings, simply because it came up. When this happens, I usually get back to normal rather quickly.

    After panic attacks or being in my feelings throughout the day I usually have to write to him. I feel like I don't have enough words to tell him about what I felt and about how I felt, but looking at my journal entry and its four pages, front and back, I feel like I potentially got to the point. Or maybe I was just rambling and only touched on the subject.

    In fewer words, my little sister, who I lovingly call Pookie (my kids call her Tia Pookie), advised me to journal as if I was writing to my husband who was simply unable to receive calls, and it's the best advice I've gotten thus far. It helps me process things. I've been told to let his spirit go, to stop crying for him so he can be free. I can't stop crying for him, tough. As the quote (loosely) goes: Grief is the love I have left for the person that has nowhere to go. Okay, probably VERY loosely. 

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Changes in Life

     Changes in life happen in a flash. Did you trip and break your ankle...as a dancer? Did you break your wrist...as a tennis player? Dare I say, did you marry your beau of almost 12 years, only to have him pass away of ongoing health problems less than a month later? This last one happened to me, and I'm not always okay. A song comes on and it just hits the spot that hurts. A smell, a random memory.

    Sometimes I feel like I'm moving on too fast, like it didn't just happen in January; yet other times I feel like I'm not healing at all. I know grief and healing isn't linear, but how can I go days without crying? How am I grieving if I'm not constantly curled up in a ball in bed, and able to take care of my kids? How can I not be grieving if his urn is still sitting on my dining room table, and his portrait sitting in his comfy chair, yet I don't spend the day just staring at them? How am I able to move on with life almost like I'm not deeply affected?

    People tell me I can do it because I'm so strong. Just the same way almost eight years ago when he was first diagnosed with End Stage Kidney Disease. I was 8 months pregnant with our son when I drove him to the emergency room, and our almost three-year-old daughter stayed home with my mom. That day we went from a family practice clinic to local ER to being transferred by ambulance to a big hospital in the city. It was terrifying. It was numbing. But we made it through all the setup for him to do his dialysis treatments at home. Then we made it through moving to the city and many hospital stays and the complications that occasionally come with peritoneal dialysis. Everyone commended me for being so strong and supportive, and not having just left him and his monthly deliveries of dialysis solutions and supplies, and biweekly doctor appointments with his nephrologist team. My little family unit accommodated his treatments, and our lives literally revolved around him and his treatments.

    For a while I was the breadwinner of the family. I didn't let him work. I didn't want him to work. His last job before then he kept getting sick with the common stuff everyone gets, except his weakened body and immunity system would make it worse for him, plus he was not properly doing the dialysis treatments at the time. So, I chose to keep him home. Unfortunately, he kept getting sick, and, so more hospital stays. With each stay they would add to his list of complications and add to his list of specialists to his team.

    This April 2023 would have been twelve years together. We married December 20, 2022, and he passed January 8th, less than a month later. When I got the call at 2am I couldn't even cry, I was in such shock. My mouth was instantly extremely dry, and my stomach was in knots. I called my dad and said, "He left me, Daddy. He just left me." In his sleep-induced confusion, he asked who I lost, and I said, "Jay left me. He left us." All he could think of to say was, "Tell me what you need." I didn't even know what I needed so I said I didn't know, but that I would tell him if I needed anything. All I needed was his support.

    Then came the hard call: his mom. I called her, and by then I was crying. She answered and I told her that her son had just passed away, and can she come pick me up so we can go see him. It was the absolute most difficult call I've ever made, but it felt like she was ready for it. About 20 minutes later she and my sister-in-law pulled up and she just swept me away to the hospital. I was so numb I couldn't cry more than a slow, steady stream of tears. Neither of us said anything, we just held hands all the way to the hospital.

    We get to the ICU where he was, and the nurse saw us and took us to him and gave us all the time we needed. We sat there in silence except for my occasional sob. I kept asking myself why he didn't keep fighting for us, but I realized he had been fighting an uphill battle from the moment I took him to the ER for the last time, which had already been weeks at this point. He was essentially on chemical life support, where medications were given to him to pull the blood from his extremities (which slowly kills your extremities) to his heart and other vital organs. He was so tired; he couldn't even hold his phone to look at it. The way everything started and kept happening like dominoes falling one after the other left my head reeling. I understood most of what was happening and why, I just couldn't accept that it was happening in my life. That this wasn't a movie. That there was a real possibility of him losing all or part of each leg, but then the doctor stopped coming in because it was definitely going to happen, but then that there was no point in doing it based on his overall health. 

    The funeral was only five days later, on my mom's birthday. I felt bad that it was on her birthday, but I wanted to give us the closure we needed to start (hopefully) moving on. It was a small ceremony, with a prayer led by his mom, and then friends and family could say something about their relationship with him. At the end I said a few words, which I don't remember except that I said, "If he had an idea, it was now your idea, too." Or something like that. And it was true. As everyone was starting to leave, I went to say my last words and touch him for the very last time ever in my life. I couldn't help but let out a pained sob for him. I didn't want to let him go. I wanted more time with him. I wanted him to come home with me. I didn't want him to be buried, much less cremated, which was his choice. 

    When I went to pick up his box of ashes at the funeral home, I cried all the way home. I had already bought his urn because I wanted to have it ready immediately after he came home. It's a lovely little stainless-steel urn with a tree in the shape of a heart, two cardinals, and a poem. It sits on the dinner table because I don't want to hang his portrait and shelf up because I feel like it just makes things that much more permanent and final. And I'm just not ready for that.

    It's been 6 months since he passed away, and some days it feels like it was just yesterday, while other days it feels like it's been years. Most days it feels like I'm just waiting for him to come home from the store or a doctor's appointment. But every day I miss him immensely. Every day I wish I could have more time with him, be more patient with him, be more caring and understanding with him. There isn't a day I don't regret something about how I treated our relationship or took him for granted.

    Ultimately there are constantly changes in life, be it small or large, that change our course in so many ways. Maybe fate, maybe not, but I hope some omnipotent entity didn't put me on this planet to stay on the struggle bus most of my young adult life. That would really suck. I still believe changes in our life are something that we control, kind of like a domino effect of choice followed by consequences. What do you think? Are changes in life fate, or consequences?

Imposter Syndrome *Adult Language*

 So, I don't have imposter syndrome when it comes to this blog, because I'm mostly doing it to keep track of myself. Kind of like a diary, I guess, but it wouldn't hurt to end up monetizing. I do have imposter syndrome about selling Tupperware (which I haven't done since like 2021, I think) and my mental health issues. I say "issues" because I don't like the word "ill". I pair "ill" with fevers and obvious outward symptoms, which I don't always show.

I also start a lot of my personal entries with, "So". Ha ha ha ha. Like I said, I write because it just comes to me, and the words just start flowing. My ink and paper entries are so random in dates, and each entry is made up of scattered thoughts. My handwriting style looks like eleven-teen different people wrote in consecutive order in the same pen. It's funny, really, but sometimes I don't even recognize my own writing!

Anyways, back to my imposter syndrome. I feel like an imposter when it comes to Tupperware because, obviously, I haven't sold it in, like, forever, but also because I feel so imposing and desperate asking people to buy it. Maybe it's because I hit up my family so hard? I don't know. I tried the asking-random-people thing with no success. I just don't understand how people sell stuff so much and so fast?! Like, I understand that Tupperware basically sells itself in quality and the warranty, but where the hell are the people who value the quality and warranty in my area?!!! I thought about giving one more try, but I just don't think it's in me. Really really, I don't see myself advancing in the Tupperware world.

My other point of imposter syndrome is my mental "affliction". Ha ha, that sounds so Victorian. So, as I was saying, my mental alphabet-soup-of-diagnoses is real enough. The panic attacks that range from hyperventilation to just zoning out, the physical pain, emotional rollercoasters, appetite changes, endless sleep, insomnia, hypo/hyper-mania...it's a long list. I was denied benefits by federal disability guidelines, but then again, they claim they didn't have information about my hospitalization last year for mental health reasons. I submitted an appeal to the denial about 3 months later, because they basically said not to even try without new information. So, I chose not to appeal and keep getting benefits through my old job (the one that "broke" me). 

A few months later I found myself denied benefits through my old job, with the appeal there having no resolution any time soon. So, I decided I had to try and go back to work. The first job I bombed out of was a freaking door greeter at Wally World. Freaking. Door greeter. I couldn't do it. I started getting really anxious and I even had a hyperventilating panic attack AT the store. In front of the general manager. I scared him. The second job I bombed out of was at Target. This was a fun job, but caused me panic attacks still, and I was so bummed and disappointed when I got fired that I cried. 

So, I tried. I tried to be part of the work force, but it just wasn't my time to shine. My sisters send me job opportunity links and I just freeze and panic. I am truly afraid of working, even though my dad taught us that working is how you succeed in life. I am not afraid of the work, I am afraid of failing at the work. I don't know how to explain it without sounding like a total loser. And the worst thing, is I want to work. I want to have all the things. I want to have the money and the house and cars. I just can't get out of my own head.

What am I doing? *Adult language*

I don't know what I'm doing. With all the sincerity and honesty in my heart: I have no earthly, or otherwise, clue what the fuck I'm doing with my life, in my life, or for my life. If that makes sense. 

I'm a little bit stressed, and a lot a bit blessed.

I'm stressed out about my federal disability case, but I am realizing more that I shouldn't have been denied in the first place. They said they didn't have information about my hospitalization, which is simply not true, because I know I put that in the application. Now I'm struggling to make ends meet while still struggling with my hyper/hypo manias from my bipolar disorder. I mean, I'm spending within my limit, but I'm spending money I should be saving for when I'm not being paid by my disability claim from work.

I've been blessed, nonetheless. Blessed to still have an income, even though I don't know if I'm going to get it that month or not. Blessed to have my children healthy. Blessed to have Jay's health improving. Blessed to have a home, a working car, and phones.

Blessed to have a life to fight for, even when it's the hardest thing I do, period.

My little family has gone through so much to have what little we do have, and I thank my stars and moon and sun for all the blessings we have received. I take time to listen to my family with my eyes, and to see them with my ears. I feel the love between us, like strings on the violin I no longer play. They know I love them, and they know I know. I call them and they say, "What? You love me? Is that what you were gonna say, Mama?" "Yes, my little bucket of love. I was going to say, 'I love you.'"

I know they know I love them, because they enthusiastically tell me how school was, and what they did. Because they run to the car when I go pick them up after school. Because they still snuggle with me and hug me tight. Because they tell me what's wrong at the moment. Because they trust me enough to find me when they're blue or bored or excited.

But do they know if I love me? I don't know, because I don't even know if I truly love me. How can I freely love a self that has so many mental health issues? How do I love a self that sometimes struggles with taking a shower daily? A self that struggles to, or doesn't, wake up for her kids when they need her? A self that sees her sick partner struggling to keep the household somewhat clean? A self whose brain sometimes forgets it needs to be present?

How do I love Myself when I struggle to do the basics? How do I get myself to do the things she needs to do in order to find normalcy in her life? Because the "normal" that's going on now is a bunch of bullshit. Plain and clear, this chapter in my life sucks cactus ass, and can just close out so I can move on to living and being able to work so we can buy a house and settle down in our own place.

So, I'm on the hunt for a new therapist, keeping on with my medications, and trying to wake up and do the mom things I need to do. If I'm not able to get it together consistently, I'll probably have to go back to the hospital for another stay in attempt to "balance" me out again.