A Rough Few Weeks

The last few weeks I feel like I have been suffocating in my grief.  If you follow me on facebook at all, you already know that.  I'm so ready to come up for air.  I tried to take a break from active grieving today and read a book "for pleasure".  I really enjoyed it.  And tonight, my tongue is so swollen with sores I can hardly close my mouth.  My body literally rebels when I try to stuff away my toxic feelings.  This is crap.  So I am back up out of bed yet again tonight, blogging, listening to music, crying.  Trying to release some of the pain from my heart and my body.

I have had three major losses out of my support network in 2011.  I lost one friend to suicide in July, one friend to an accident in early November, and one walked out of my life by choice at the end of November forcing me to make decisions in my work situation that I am not ready to deal with.   Grieving each of these losses is so difficult when I am still trying to process all that goes with losing Max!  You know that cliche' "When it rains, it pours"?  Well I have been standing in the middle of a freakin' downpour since August 2010 and I am ready for the SUN to come back, PLEASE!

I went for a "check up" with my counselor after my last loss, and she was surprised to see me.  She had released me, fully assured that I was equipped with the tools I needed to move forward in grief.  However, Jeanie's accident in early November had a lot of similarities to Max's death - sudden, gone without saying goodbye, she was an organ/tissue donor, she was young and gone too soon, and the same core group of friends are mourning her loss.  And my body "recognized" these similarities way before I did!  Emotional trauma does strange things to a brain.  When my counselor pointed out that my body "remembered" those feelings from when they were happening with Max and that is why I was having such a violent grief reaction, I knew it was true.  Amazing, complicated, RIDICULOUS.

I've always thought of myself as a fairly self-motivated, self-sufficient person who is in control.  Since Max's death, I don't feel like ANY of those things are still true.  Each new loss knocks me farther away from who I was.  I look in the mirror and I don't even recognize the person staring back at me.  The dark circles under my eyes are never going to go away.  I look and feel so OLD.  I actually secretly look forward to having a severe migraine.  Why?  Because I am in so much physical pain that I cannot focus on the emotional pain.   Hmm, that doesn't seem right.

One of my friends/colleagues wrote me this week and asked me about something I used to love, and she asked if "grief had punched the passion out of me" for that particular thing.    OUCH.    But dang, that is exactly what has happened OVERALL - GRIEF HAS PUNCHED THE PASSION OUT OF ME - passion for work, passion for love, passion in general. 


I know it's possible to go from existing to living again.  I want to believe that the underdog always rises to the occasion and wins the fight.  I know all of this takes time.  I'm just very weary of the process tonight.  Thank you for continuing to let me vent, you must get tired of hearing the same things over and over.   In that same email, my friend also said  "I respect your grief and understand it as best I can, and I also want to punch IT in the nose . . ."  I am with her on that!!