Navigating the Darkness?

[Stormborn]

I am new to the site. It was recommended to me by my therapist. She assures me it will help to know others who are dealing with similar grief. I thought I would give it a shot, as nothing else seems to work.

I lost the love of my life, Mikah at the end of November to a car accident. Accident seems like a kind word to describe the event that shattered my life into such tiny pieces that I can't see how I will ever be able to sort them out. I was unaware of just how entangled our lives had become which is absurd given we had been together for 7 years, and we were to be married this May. I am sure that's going to suck, but I suppose that is all relevant at the moment. I don't really know why I am writing. It is something I do from time to time to help sort out my thoughts, and my therapist says reaching out will help. This is me reaching out. Somebody has to be able to give me some sort of advice that will help me navigate the black abyss my life has become without his light. 

I am lost which is not a sensation with which I am familiar. The world around me is unfamiliar and grey. Things that used to matter seem unimportant and my ambition for my life seems to have died with him. The metaphorical knife in my chest never seems to leave, and although the knife may be a metaphor the pain is real and tangible so much so it is difficult to breath. I can still smell him, hear his laugh, see his unspoken question to my thoughts, and when I sleep I still feel his arms around me and for a moment I forget. However, eventually reality comes crashing back down and my world shatters all over again. Simply put Mikah was my person, my soulmate (if you believe in that sort of thing). The only person I felt a true connection. He knew me better than I did, tempered my faults, encouraged my goals, endured my crazy, and loved me unconditionally. He made me better; we made each other better. I know people say that they would gladly take their place, but honestly I would not, could not, condemn him to the life I now wake up to on a daily basis. Would he be disappointed that I have been unable to continue with the life we had? Probably, but I also don't think he would be much better off if our roles were reversed. Small comfort I suppose but it is something.

I feel like I am drowning, lost at sea (which is particularly terrifying given my fear of open water) with no life raft. I can't tread water forever. On the other hand, I can't give up and let the abysmal sea take me. I have a mom who I don't want to put through even a semblance of the pain I feel, and I have other family as well. I won't say we are close seeing as I haven't lived in the country for nearly the last 10 years, but they are family and I don't want to hurt them the way giving in would. More importantly I don't know for sure there is an afterlife. What if we just dissolve back into the atoms we started as and I have left the only world he existed, what if we reincarnate and I never find him again , what if there is other realms after death but we are sent different one...regardless of what happens, I can't bring myself to leave the only aspects of him I still have. Nihilistic I know but I am supposed to be honest and it is how I feel. I simply wish to hear from others that can understand and not look at me with pity or false assurances. The meaningless platitudes are not helping nor is the pressure to be done with the grief from the people who didn't know him. I have moved back to my parents house in the states mostly because I couldn't stay in the house we made for us without him. However, that means that I am surrounded by people who know little of the life we built and even fewer friends. Maybe it was a mistake to move from our home in Scotland but it was simply too empty and meaningless without Mikah to share it with. I feel like half a person a human shell with no soul. I never been very good with emotions but now I feel both flooded and devoid of emotions I never knew I possessed. 

Am I crazy? Does the crippling loneliness lessen? Does breathing get easier? Does life regain a bit of colour? Will I ever feel whole again? Does it ever become bearable to live in a world without him? 

Thanks for listen/reading.

[Heart&Soul]

I am so sorry for your loss.  My heart goes out to you.  All the things you feel I can relate to.  It's hard to breathe some days and when I think about the future it feels hopeless and empty.  Please know you are not alone and it's good that you found yourself on this forum.  The kind people here have a wealth of advise and there is no judgement - only love.  I am not especially religious but I truly believe I will see my beautiful husband when I pass over and that gives me hope.  

Sending you a big hug.  Take care of yourself.

[Sunflower2]

@Stormborn your loss is deep. your life as you once knew it has been shattered. I'm deeply sorry for your loss. 

In time you will find what works best for you.  There will be people that you will find that you find comfort in reaching out to.  Reach out and be open to receive.  You are fragile and vulnerable as you begin this journey. In time it will get lighter.  Your grief journey is yours alone. It is the most challenging journey we will ever encounter.  Honor it and respect it.  The pain is deep.  It is excruciating. You can't bypass it. You can't run from it.   Take one baby step at a time.  You mentioned you love to write.  Perhaps consider journaling? Research has shown that bubble baths are grounding. Consider trying that. Therapy sessions have become my grief sanctuaries.  

A loss is traumatic. Your loss has an added layer of trauma.  It was tragic and sudden. 

I send warm comfort and thoughts to you as you begin this journey.  It is painful but you will survive in your way and in your time. 

~Sunflower~

 

[Sunflower2]

5 hours ago, Stormborn said:

Does it ever become bearable to live in a world without him? 

with lightness there is darkness.  Love is our lightness.  Darkness is our loss.  In time it balances out where  lightness and darkness become partners.  All this is part of your journey.  You will in your own way begin to feel his presence.

[Stormborn]

 

1 hour ago, Sunflower2 said:

with lightness there is darkness.  Love is our lightness.  Darkness is our loss.  In time it balances out where  lightness and darkness become partners.  All this is part of your journey.  You will in your own way begin to feel his presence.

 

@Sunflower2 Thank you for your words. It helps to hear someone else validate what has been in my head for months and nobody else seems to grasp. It is very hard to believe this crushing darkness will not be something to endure. I am not even sure I could bear the thought of it getting easier to be in a world where he is not, but maybe in time. Thank you for your kind words, and I will try the journal idea. Thank you again.

 

 

[ccoflove]

I am so sorry @Stormborn for your loss. I am navigating the darkness too. I lost my love suddenly in a car accident in Nov. too. I literally went to the tree that took his life and picked up the shattered pieces of my heart. I know how you feel about wanting to hold on to the last remaining parts. I havent tried therapy but have been journaling, writing letters to my love does help me express myself and feel a connection. This forum is also very helpful, just to know you are not alone. Just trying to get through one day at a time, moment by moment when its hard to breath. Im so sorry we are in the same boat together. ~ C

[KayC]

Stormborn,

I am struck by what you wrote, you so aptly put into words the feelings and thoughts we've had in our early grief...all of us at a loss for how to begin to do this, more questions than answers...

It's been nearly 14 years for me.  I've learned grief has a beginning but not an ending.  I've also learned it does not stay the same, it changes form, it's ever-evolving.  Thankfully.  In the beginning I couldn't see any glimmer of light or hope, after all, he was dead, that seems pretty permanent, how then could it ever get better?

Over the years I have learned that the pain diminishes little by little, or maybe we just get better at coping with it, but somehow we begin to adjust to this new life we were hurled into.  Some people don't want a glimmer of light because they think somehow that means pulling away from them.  I've found for myself that's not the case at all, it's our love that binds us together and that love still exists.  The only thing that happened June 19, 2005 was his physical body gave out.  Period.  He didn't disavow his love for me, nor I for him!  Everything I learned from him I get to take with me on my journey.  I am a better person for having known him, for having been touched by his life.  I was so lucky to have met him!  I am so sorry you won't be able to realize your wedding day, I am so sorry he's gone from you.  We are learning to carry them in a different way.  He can't physically hold me any more, we no longer talk over our day, he can't service my car or take walks with me in the woods any more, but I've learned to carry him inside my heart.  I hope you don't think me crazy for it, but I talk to him, if not aloud, in my mind.  I love him!  I love him still!  I could shout it from the rooftops!  He is still my beloved!  And yes, my soul mate.  I have never met another person I clicked with like him, never met another that we could communicate so well with each other, never loved another's smell or the feel of their heartbeat against mine.

We all have different ideas about what happens after "this", I believe in afterlife, I believe we will be together again...we found each other once, which was a miracle and a mystery, my faith tells me we will again.  Each of us has to reconcile in our own minds what we think about all this...I choose to believe, I need that hope.  I like to watch videos of outer space, when I see how vast everything is, all of the galaxies that exist, how space seems to go on forever, how we are ever learning, it helps me to see I don't know everything, there is so much more to find out and I realize how the unknown opens up worlds of possibilities to me!  Things I can't explain, things I don't understand, and I realize my faith, my belief, my hopes, those are as tangible as anything I can touch, see, feel, smell.  There is so much more...I have only to be open to it and it exists for me.

You are very good at expressing yourself...I FEEL you as I read the words you wrote...it brings back to me the things I've felt and experienced in the last nearly 14 years.  It takes me back to the day and time when I lost my George, the months/years following.  All of my thoughts and feelings, my pain, the tears shed, the fear of the unknown future.  I have learned to do my time one day at a time, it has helped relieved my anxiety...I can do today.  One foot in front of the other, the way we get through this day.

Some days we have not wanted to come out of our covers.  Some days I shed tears on my long commute home, having to pull over and let them flow.  I can tell you each and every day of this journey I have missed my George, each and every day I still love him, perhaps even more than I did before...can you appreciate any more or any less when you fully realize what has been lost to you?!

19 hours ago, Stormborn said:

I am lost which is not a sensation with which I am familiar.

This has a way of redefining everything which was before, everything which is after, who we are, where to go from here.  We realize we are not in control, perhaps for the first time in our lives!  This is not something we could control, it happened and it affected every aspect of our being.  It rearranged our world.  I used to wonder how the sun could go on shining!  Did it not know my George was dead?!  How can people go on about their day?  You see them walking in the streets, going from here to there, driving, do they not know?!

Such are the thoughts that hit us.  No you are not crazy.  If you are crazy, we all are crazy!  This is grief.  This is normal for grief.  Not that anything feels normal anymore.  Throw that word out the window!  I hated the term "new normal" when I heard it.  I didn't want a new normal, I wanted my old normal back!  I wanted the life we lived, how happy we were to live our everyday existence!  But I've also realized that little by little it's essential that I learn to live my life with what I have,  what is.

It is so hard to process sudden death.  One moment he's here, the next...your world is overturned.  It took me years to process it.  I read books, articles, I saw a grief counselor, and the biggest help of all was in going to a forum much like this one and learning I was not alone in what I was feelings, in expressing my feelings and reading others thoughts...I hope this will be of help to you as well, I hope it will help you to know that here exists people who get it.

[Stormborn]

KayC,

First, thank you for your encouragement. While at the moment I recoil at the idea of the pain diminishing, it is reassuring to know that I will perhaps get better at shouldering it. I will say that just reading the thoughts and words of others who have suffered a similar loss is...if not reassuring at least cathartic. It is somewhat soothing to know I am not alone in my "melancholy" as Mikah would put it. I can't think you crazy for talking to him considering I do the same thing. I see him everywhere and can sometimes see his face and hear what he would say in a given situation. I too sometimes refuse to get out of bed. It is a double edged sword for me at the moment. I can't go to sleep because he isn't next to me and the bed feels empty. I then finally get to sleep only to see him in my dreams. They are so real that when I do wake up I forget that he isn't next to me and the tsunami of grief hits all over again. I can't decide if I never want to go to sleep so I don't have to wake without him, or if I just never want to wake up.

1 hour ago, KayC said:

I used to wonder how the sun could go on shining!  Did it not know my George was dead?!  How can people go on about their day?  You see them walking in the streets, going from here to there, driving, do they not know?!

I have to say I feel like this everyday. It does not seem logical that the world continues to spin and people go on as nothing has changed. Do they not realize what was lost that the world is both darker and colder because he is gone. It not only lost a great mind and person, but the potential he had to change things and push us as a species further. I know that sounds a little arrogant but, he worked as a leader on a European space project. He truly was a once in generation scientific mind, and the world will never realize it because he was gone before he got to finish his work.

Space was a big deal for us. He was an astrophysicist and aeronautical engineering , and I studied genetics and biochemistry. We worked together on different teams of the same project. Anyways, what you said about the unknown and open possibilities sounds a lot like his philosophy on pretty much anything. I am more of a believer in the hear in now and in facts and figures. The unknown tends to make me anxious. He used to laugh and say "there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Sarah." So thanks for reminding me that there is more out there than I can comprehend at the moment, and thanks for the reminder that made me smile a little. I really needed it this morning. 

[KayC]

My son is an engineer (computer, mechanical, electrical) and has dealt in aeronautics.  He works for Garmin and is work is classified so he doesn't get to discuss it with me, but some of what he does is similar to the field he was in when in the Air Force when I was working for a company that made military airplane parts...I think it got me thinking about the unknown which space represents to me.

I know your loss is tremendous, I can feel and hear your love, it is as ours was, something very real and beautiful and it's very hard to be missing that once we've had it.

 

19 hours ago, Stormborn said:

I recoil at the idea of the pain diminishing

It's not our grief that binds us to them, but our love, and that continues still.  We weren't meant to handle grief at it's most distressing moment for a prolongued time, Lord knows it's hard enough living with this as it is.  I relate to your having a hard time sleeping in your bed without him...to me it was a reminder of his being gone from me, I took to sleeping in a recliner.  Whatever brings us any form of comfort!  For each of us we might find it's something different.

I hope you will continue to come here, it helps to know there are others here going through this that understand.