grief

I have no life. Did I mention that? I look forward to work. I look forward to going to the office to see and interact with other people. It's pathetic, it really is. But this is a marked improvement upon the months BEFORE I was employed. Before I was hired in August I only left the house to go to yoga. Then I would come home, and shut the door, and wait. Wait until the next time I would have to go beyond the safe confines of my room to deal with the battleground that existed beyond that door.

When I was in complete isolation, this winter and spring, the only voice I wanted to hear was the voice of my yoga teacher telling me to breath, or lower my hip or use my mula bunda when standing in tree pose. And sometimes, when lying in Savasana, I would want to tell him to shut up too. Unless he was chanting. I could listen to someone chant for eternity. But after yoga I would leave the Studio as quickly as possible and get into my car without talking to a soul and get home as soon as I could and when I got into the safe confines of my room, I would feel okay again. Well, relatively okay based upon what was left of me after everything that went down this last January.

But anything that made me have to leave that room for any other reason other than to go to yoga was such a complete effort that I would be exhausted even before I opened the door of my room to emerge to complete whatever mission someone had given me. Grocery shopping. That was a necessity. I HAD to grocery shop because I had to eat. I tried NOT eating, which was fine really... except I needed choclate or sugar or twizzlers or something to stimulate my system. SOMETHING that would taste fine and sweet and rich, SOMETHING to let me know that there was something good in life. Still. Even after. After my crappy winter of 08. The winter that I survived... though I didn't really want to. The winter that I would go to bed as soon as I could.... it had to be dark... in order for me to turn the light out and go to sleep. It had to at least be dark. I couldn't try to go to sleep while it was still light out. For some reason I just couldn't allow myself to give into that. The winter that seemed to go on forever and then it turned to spring and that seemed to go on forever and then summer came and THAT seemed to go on forever... now Fall is here... and time seems to have sped up a little. I guess that is how I know that maybe some of the grief I have been carrying around with me since January is settling into me and becoming a part of me, grounding me and steadying me. Like a lead ball tied between my feet. Punch me and knock me over but I will automatically fly back up... like those punching bag dolls we had when we were little. Like a weeble. Weebles wobble but they don't fall down. Or they DO fall down but some cruel trick of gravity makes them bop right back up.... even if they don't want to.

I wonder if any of this sounds familiar to anyone else? I was so isolated and alone in my own mind and thoughts, and any effort to make contact with another human being was so... exhausting. and unfulfilling... and usually annoying that I thought for sure I was bound to go crazy. Or was crazy but no one had figured it out yet... but when they did then it was going to be four point restraints. I was truly afraid for my sanity during these past few months. So afraid that once I did collapse and crumble and I think my head almost exploded and I told my friend Laura that I really really really thought that I was going crazy.

Grief. It was grief that did this to me. Grief that punched me in the stomach one day and kept it's effing fist in there and every now and then it would spread it's fingers out wide and twist while it was also grabbing some of my guts and pieces of my heart and then it would twist some more just for fun. It would twist when I looked back, or looked ahead, or looked at the present and wondered how I was going to deal with it... this... the present. The thing I didn't want to be in. Twist when someone would ask me if I was feeling better... or if they hinted that I shouldn't let this get me down, or if someone would call and talk with that forced chipperness because they were sick of hearing me depressed. Grief that made me want to tell people to stop effing calling me if you want an effing progress report because THERE HAS BEEN NO PROGRESS. So please stop asking. It was grief that made me turn my back on just about everyone and everything in my life because everyone and everything in my life seemed to want me to just move on from this little hitch in my life. The hitch where I lost the guy... the guy who I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. It was grief that told me that although I wasn't going to spend the rest of my life with him..... HE had spent the rest of his life with ME.

But today.... looking back on this year... I realize now that there has been progress. That although it seems like I don't have a life.... I have one. The grief is not so close to the surface most days anymore. I mean, sometimes it's there, sure. When I think of what he and I might be doing now, if he were still alive. When I think of how another month has passed, every month when we come up on the 24th... the number of the day he died. It's there. It's there when I see someone else grieving. My eyes water up in an instant when someone tells me they had to put their dog down or when I read some sad news of someone too young dying in the obits. It's there and I can bring it up in an instant. But it doesn't own my anymore......