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Weekends


Perro J

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This weekend has been bad.

I really set very little on my to do list by intention. Each day had two tasks. One: jog for a mile. Two: Choose one room and one room only and spend an hour and no more cleaning it. Saturday I went for a jog as prescribed. I also cleaned the laundry room. Tasks completed on Saturday. My reward was to be spending the rest of the day practicing guitar and video games. I discovered the washing machine has a leak and it needs to be fixed. Then I realized I lost the operating system on my gaming computer and that I might need a new drive. I've resolved most of that - but I don't have the brain power to solve everything - and I HATE this feeling that I am always tired, fuzzy in my thinking. I feel exhausted, shitty, and depressed. I cannot stay like this. I need my brain back. I need some energy and motivation.

When I went to the home store to buy some cleaning supplies I started crying in the store. I saw the Christmas decorations were out and I began to recall shopping for them with her. Then I remembered a moment together in the store when she noticed a lapel pin I was wearing - a pin that had the flags of our two countries intertwined together. Her eyes lit up when she saw that pin and she kissed me on the spot. I asked her if she liked it and she nodded vigorously. I had been smart enough to think she would and I had bought an extra one for her too. I gave it to her and got still yet another kiss. And now....I am a sad, lonely, not useful, old man crying in Menard's.

I ate mostly fast food this weekend. She would frown on that.

I found a card she gave me today. It says she loves me. More tears.

The weekend has been rainy and damp and grey. I went for another jog. I didn't clean jack today. I spent most of the day restoring the computer, sleeping in between downloads. There is no joy in it. This is not living - this is merely existing. What am I fighting for here? Maybe there is no God. Maybe this is just a brief flash of light in between two ends of eternal darkness. She was my joy. I don't have that anymore.

I have nothing to look forward to. That in itself feels like it is killing me.

 

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Perro J,

I know this feels like a terrible existence.  It is terrible, for awhile.  You are only a few months down this path.

The first year I was in free fall in a dark abyss for much of the year. I would struggle to go through the motions of living and then something would trigger a memory of him and I would fall through a trap door into the abyss again.  It wasn't just big things like birthdays, anniversaries or holidays that would shatter my life, it could be any number of little things.

For example my husband was a devoted protector of Florida gopher tortoises (smaller versions of the Galapagos tortoise). He would always stop his car in traffic to get out and assist one across the road.  One day about 5 months after my husband had passed I was driving to work and saw a tortoise on the road that had been hit by a car.  I was shaking so badly I had to pull the car over to sob. When I was able, I turned around and drove home. I didn't make it in to work for 3 or 4 days.  I was just devastated.  Some how it was my fault that tortoise had died.  I hadn't saved him.  My husband would have gotten that tortoise safely across the road.  I let John down.  I wished I was the smashed tortoise and that it was still roaming the island. 

I know it makes no sense. But emotionally my life was shattered again. My mind could not fit the pieces of the world  back together.  I couldn't understand where I fit into the world.  I hadn't saved John and now I hadn't saved the tortoise, the demise of the world was my fault. I couldn't even explain to people why I was in such dispair.

I say all this to tell you it does get better.  It took me a long time, longer than most I think, for my mind to sort out my place in the world. 

Keep putting one foot in front of the other. Keep breathing for one more day.  You will one day find that you have made your way back to the world and it's not terrible anymore.

Give yourself time.

Gail

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Perro, that is exactly how I feel. No joy, what is the point, existing. I haven't really spent a weekend at home since May. The silence really is deafening when I am here by myself. Thankfully my friend is still happy for me to go there but I know I can't do that forever.

I told my counsellor today that I am sick if feeling like this but there is no fix other than going through it. I showed her a video we did earlier in the year when we went away for a weekend and we're goofing around. - I love to hear her voice. The counsellor got a laugh and I got a glimpse of who I used to be - that person is also gone now, the me that I grew into with Indy by my side. She gave me the confidence to be myself. She gave me so much more that I never realized until now. But now I am another version of me, one who is trying but forever changed.

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9 hours ago, Gail 8588 said:

I say all this to tell you it does get better.  It took me a long time, longer than most I think, for my mind to sort out my place in the world. 

Keep putting one foot in front of the other. Keep breathing for one more day. 

This!

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14 hours ago, Gail 8588 said:

I say all this to tell you it does get better.  It took me a long time, longer than most I think, for my mind to sort out my place in the world. 

Indeed.  But to be honest, I don't think it took you longer than most of us.  I'm more than 2 years into this journey and I most definitely have not figured out my place in the world without my husband.  I still think in terms of we, ours, and us, though I am slowly finding it easier and more automatic to think of I, mine, and me.  I'm figuring out how to carry my grief and not let it crush me.  I've taken steps forward, absolutely, yet I don't truly know who I am now and I still can't look very far into the future without kind of losing it.

I think the people in our lives perceive us to be doing better than we are because that's what is expected and often that's what we project.  I believe we do that in part because it's just so freaking exhausting, emotionally and physically, to deal with others who simply don't get it and can't possibly understand.  Maybe we see others as doing better than they are because that's what they project to the world, so we think they've somehow got it all figured out.  We don't see them when they're alone in their own grief.  I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to learn that their lives aren't any easier than ours.

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I think I know what you mean when you say "There is no joy in it. This is not living - this is merely existing". 

Things that held an interest for me just don't right now.  I know I need to find something to occupy my mind/time but I can't think of what it could be.  I walk around my house saying to myself  "I don't know".  I bet I say that 10 times a day.  I used to know exactly what I wanted, I was never bored, I was happy.  Then like you, my world crashed and, nothing is the same.  I hope that sooner than later -  I'll know what I am supposed to be doing. 

I sincerely wish that you discover some source of joy.  

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My heart breaks for you. I wish I had some helpful advice for you to give you comfort, but I am feeling much of the same thing.

I have been through this once before with my daughter's Dad. We buried him on his 26th birthday. They were just babies, reliant on me, and although I grieved his death, I had to devote myself to being there for our daughters.

Now fast forward to September 26th when I suddenly lost my partner of almost 20 years. Thanks to Covid I was not allowed to visit him the last 3 weeks he was alive, but his death wasn't Covid related. Here I am again, a month before my birthday, major holidays coming up, & all I see is dark, lonely, emptiness in the coming years. Right now I can't even be around people for fear I will just completely break down. It is darn hard to see life going on around you as everyone is happily living their lives and yours is at a stand still. I see myself in the future merely existing also, just waiting for my time to be through so I can be with Shawn again. Besides that nothing else really matters much.

I will pray that somehow you find a sense of peace in your life. Your wife loves you and she will be waiting when your time is done.

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I remember how hard weekends were at first. I dreaded the weekends. That was our time, and that now empty alone time to fill felt worse then being at work where I had some social interaction, but was also hard. I felt like I couldnt catch a break anyday of the week. I pushed myself to find projects to occupy myself as I imagined that's what he would do if our places were swapped. It helped a little and I felt some accomplishment and made a few new friends by doing that and spending time with them helped to feel less alone. Still weekends are nothing like before. I've learned to lower my expectations and try and appreciate the little things more than before.

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Weekends are the hardest indeed! It’s just over four months since I lost my love and I feel like I have run out of tasks to occupy myself with to avoid feeling the total and complete loneliness and abandonment. Everything that had to be put in order is in order, now what! I miss him so much! With him there was never a dull moment! Now everything seems dull and pointless. Or as he once said, “I’m blue today” - this is a song he wrote and recorded with his rock band The Blades in the 90s.


Sent from my iPad using Grieving.com

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1 hour ago, Maria_PI said:

Everything that had to be put in order is in order, now what!

There are still a few things left to do - but I can see this from here. It is like I want to leave some things undone so I still have something to do.

I played in a cover band way back when too. Smoke filled bar rooms...how strange that feels to imagine now in the time of COVID.

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1 hour ago, Perro J said:

It is like I want to leave some things undone so I still have something to do.

That is incredibly insightful.  It never occurred to me that this could be why I still have things to do that have been hanging over me--some for practically the entire 2 years since I lost my love.  Certainly it's an unconscious reaction, but it kind of makes sense.  I admit that I've always had a bit of procrastination in my personality, so I kind of assumed it was that combined with grief brain + auto-immune brain fog and the physical and emotional exhaustion I've lived with for what seems like forever, but has only been a few years.

I've taken care of things that had to be finished, but so many little things that should be done remain "on the list."  Some big projects too are still sitting there waiting for me; things my husband and I planned together and that now seem so unimportant, even though they're not.  Even thinking about stuff like remodeling our ancient, horrid kitchen and replacing 30 year old carpets just make my head spin and my heart break because we had been through most of the planning and choosing.  But my budget is now lower than it was, so that's another change I have to accept.  I've waffled between keeping every choice we made together or changing a few things where I'd prefer something else.  Though our tastes were almost completely in line, we each had specific overrides.  Am I having an even harder time because it feels like I'm letting him go or "forgetting" him (as if!) if I make changes?  And so much of the time, I simply do not have the energy, mental or physical, to make much progress.

I have wondered what I'll do and how I'll feel if I ever finish all the house and yard projects.  Not, of course, that there ever really is such a thing when you own a home.  I guess it's mostly the things we were planning or in process of doing.  Maybe my subconscious mind trying to hang on to any little scrap of our life together.

Thank you for bringing this up.  It's given me something to think about and maybe work through.

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I remember how hard the weekends hit me in my early grief, our schedules/patterns were ingrained reminders of our loss.  Weekends were "ours" so they became an empty reminder of his absence...as if I needed reminding!  Everyone else was busy with their husband on the weekends so I was very alone with my loss.

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