The second year

[chincube]

Haven't written for a while, haven't really been able to.

But what they said isn't untrue, that the second year is not any better than the first. Everything is like muffled, life goes on and there's no time for me to stop and feel. From time to time that "muffling cotton" would be lifted for no reason, and it just painfully hit me back to a state that doesn't seem normally for anyone. By now for everyone it's simply not normal for me to still cry for him, to still be depressed.

I have made choices that would be frowned upon by others, but it's only way how I would have survived this year without killing myself. But even then, from time to time when the night is quiet and I am not distracted, I want to scream.

I am still so mad, so mad at him, for how can he leave me like this. I have been trying to be proud of being resilient and functional, but if it's just for myself, I am really just so mad at him for leaving me, for breaking me. 

[KayC]

32 minutes ago, chincube said:

By now for everyone it's simply not normal for me to still cry for him, to still be depressed.

I take it to mean "everyone" is those who have not lost their partner.  To "everyone" here, it IS normal and one year is simply not enough time to fully process this, for most of us.  It wasn't for me!  I think the second and third years should come with a warning, "Caution ahead!  May still be difficult terrain!"  

We do what we have to do to get by.  (((hugs)))

[chincube]

6 minutes ago, KayC said:

I take it to mean "everyone" is those who have not lost their partner.  To "everyone" here, it IS normal and one year is simply not enough time to fully process this, for most of us.  It wasn't for me!  I think the second and third years should come with a warning, "Caution ahead!  May still be difficult terrain!"  

We do what we have to do to get by.  (((hugs)))

Yes, sorry, I meant my friends, my family and they don't know this loss. And I've given up totally to find consolation from them. They're only think I'm stuck, and not willing to get out of being stuck / addicted to being stuck. 

Thanks. Its just one of the bad days... 

[ccoflove]

5 hours ago, chincube said:

I am still so mad, so mad at him, for how can he leave me like this. I have been trying to be proud of being resilient and functional, but if it's just for myself, I am really just so mad at him for leaving me, for breaking me. 

My anger at my partner seemed to hit me more the 2nd year, sinking into the realization of this new life without him. Knowing I have to carry this for the rest of my life, when the meaning, purpose and future of life has been so altered.

[jwahlquist]

((HUGS))  I wish I could say something inspirational to make you feel better   However I am having one of those days too.   Words that are positive and inspiring seem to be eluding me today   Just know that my thoughts are with you.

The only person I talk to regularly that gets it is my mom.  My mom’s best friend lost her husband 2 years ago and my mom has been walking the road with her.   I was talking to my mom the other night and she said it will take time and probably a lot of it because I didn’t just lose my spouse but my best friend too.  In 23 years of being together we were rarely apart.  No one else gets it really though.   
 

I however am mostly mad at myself.  Mad that I didn’t do a lot of things that could have prevented me losing him.   The guilt and sadness seem to eat at me somedays until I feel there’s nothing left.   

[chincube]

10 hours ago, ccoflove said:

My anger at my partner seemed to hit me more the 2nd year, sinking into the realization of this new life without him. Knowing I have to carry this for the rest of my life, when the meaning, purpose and future of life has been so altered.

That's it, that's exactly how I feel. It is different from the despair I felt before. People say you can't be mad at the person who died. That makes me even more mad...

 

9 hours ago, jwahlquist said:

((HUGS))  I wish I could say something inspirational to make you feel better   However I am having one of those days too.   Words that are positive and inspiring seem to be eluding me today   Just know that my thoughts are with you.

The only person I talk to regularly that gets it is my mom.  My mom’s best friend lost her husband 2 years ago and my mom has been walking the road with her.   I was talking to my mom the other night and she said it will take time and probably a lot of it because I didn’t just lose my spouse but my best friend too.  In 23 years of being together we were rarely apart.  No one else gets it really though.   
 

I however am mostly mad at myself.  Mad that I didn’t do a lot of things that could have prevented me losing him.   The guilt and sadness seem to eat at me somedays until I feel there’s nothing left.   

It's nice that you can talk to your mom about it, I can't really. It's not that she's not trying to be nice, but she just doesn't get it. Neither do any of my friends, there are just not that many people in their 30s who lost their partners/spouses.

I did get mad at myself in the early months though, so the what ifs and feeling guilty for living. My whole first year I had been feeling guilty for eating, because he can't. 

[KayC]

17 hours ago, jwahlquist said:

Mad that I didn’t do a lot of things that could have prevented me losing him.

Try to be forgiving of yourself, we didn't know what we didn't know.  I belong to a diabetic group and am learning more about it every day, in fact, I'm a moderator on it.  George's diabetes greatly contributed to his death, I was doing everything I knew to do for him but unfortunately the medical community advises us all wrong!  It has been life changing to realize I had to throw away their guidelines and research it fore myself.  For the first time in ten years, my diabetes is under control, I've cut my diabetic medicine in half and plan to be totally off it within a week.  It will be a work in progress the rest of my life.  I wish I had known back then what I know now, my George could still be alive, also I did not, nor did the "experts" help us.  The medical community is behind at least 50 years!  They have been teaching us wrong about diet, everything, from diabetes, fat, cholesterol, heart, you name it!  And it's a horizon we have to tread lightly because the medical community is so swayed by politics, donations, grants, etc, they dare not upset the apple cart with truth!  I'd give my all to have George back here with me for a do over.

[foreverhis]

9 hours ago, chincube said:

People say you can't be mad at the person who died. That makes me even more mad...

An extended family member is the only one in our family who also lost her husband, about 3 years before I lost my love.  She was and is angry with him.  His cancer was caused by smoking and he wouldn't stop, not even after his first successful cancer surgery.  He started to "sneak" then--sure, like she and the rest of the family wouldn't know!  Her anger has softened over the years, but will come back in difficult situations.  I'm certain there are people who tell her she shouldn't be angry or at least, not so many years later.  Absurd!

My husband's cancer was not caused by lifestyle, so I'm mostly angry with the doctors (for not taking his change in symptoms seriously sooner and for making assumptions), myself (for not stomping my feet and demanding things from the doctors and from my love), and the bastard cancer itself (which is kind of stupid because cancer is neither good nor evil, it simply is). 

Yet I have moments I am angry with him for being stubborn about not getting a couple of tests because they involved even more radiation.  (He'd had mild radiation therapy 15 years earlier for prostate cancer, which never came back.)   He was afraid it would cause yet another cancer later, but that was one of several tiny delays that added up to his not being diagnosed soon enough.  I wish I'd realized at the time that my response could have been, "Yes, maybe it will.  But cancer treatments are rapidly improving.  And we might have more time now."  I realized that too late.  I am irked sometimes that I went along with him saying, "Oh, we can wait to see the specialist at Stanford until we go up in a few months for the family events."  I should have dragged him to the car and said, "No, love, we're going now."  Lord knows, he was a stubborn man.  Usually I was good with that, but his stubbornness about those few things makes me angry once in a while.  And it's hard to be angry with him about those things when the doctors themselves didn't see it as urgent.

There are times I do something different from what we would have done together, maybe choosing a plant or a paint color or an activity.  And I'll look at his picture or just look up and say, "What?  You don't get a say in this.  You left me!"  Of course, he didn't leave me; he was taken from us.  Knowing that rationally is immaterial to the emotional eruptions that spew out at times.

I try very hard to remind myself that we owe an explanation to no one.  Our emotions and the roller coaster we ride are ours alone.  Not one single person on earth gets to tell us what we should or should not feel.  All of our feelings are valid.

[jwahlquist]

3 hours ago, KayC said:

20 hours ago, jwahlquist said:

 

Try to be forgiving of yourself, we didn't know what we didn't know

I try but there are so many things that I could have done and should have done.   My husband had Type II diabetes and apparently part of what cause him so many complications was that in conjunction with getting influenza & strep.  I hate a part of myself that should have known better.  I may never forgive myself entirely.   I know he wouldn’t blame me.  He was always so stubborn when it came to going to the doctor.   In reality, I couldn’t make him do anything but I could have begged and pleaded until he gave in.  But I didn’t and now he’s gone.   
 

[KayC]

I never forced my husband to quit smoking.  He was a grown man who was in charge of his own choices.  I do not believe in trying to control others, I don't appreciate others trying to control me, to me it is about respecting someone else.  He had cut back 90% but perhaps that didn't count?  He died of a heart attack with diabetic complications.  I didn't allow sugar in the house, I tried to cook healthy for him, he lost 50 lbs after we met and looked the picture of health!  But that was not enough.  

But neither can I blame myself.  We all wish we had a different outcome, we all wish we knew then what we know now, that MAYBE, just maybe, it might have made a difference.  But that didn't happen.  Try to let go of these regrets so they don't paralyze you, they do no earthly good.  I encouraged him to try a different doctor, but alas he didn't.