blackness

Photo from here....

I'm struggling. Mentally, emotionally, financially. So I sit and don't write...Actually, I sit and play tetris hoping to forget all the other obligations that continue to flow into our home and spill onto my already overflowing "to-do" whiteboard.

I hate writing about it. I loathe talking about it. But it bubbles forth from my mouth amid tears of frustration and sadness when someone offers the seemingly innocuous platitude, "How are you?". So I try to stay away from others in an effort to not infect them with my black mood. I wear my "happy mask" at work. I attempt to tire myself to the point of unconciousness at night or else I lay and marinate myself in the pathetic thoughts that fill my head.

When I do sleep, I repeatedly dream of Jeff dying in a variety of ways. Always, though, he dies. And always, I fail to save him though I try frantically.

It's been almost three years. I thought I'd be well-immersed into a new life by now. A new page. A fresh start...But I think I am possibly worse off than I was a year into this bloody journey.

I remember receiving an email from a widow who was farther down the path than I was. I was at about ten months post-Jeff. She was at three years. She told me that she was doing worse at three years than she had been that first year. I had sworn that this would not happen to me. I was horrified at the thought. The idea that my grief would not subside in a linear and concrete fashion was absurd.

But now...Now I find myself stuck in this place. Alone. Broke. Overwhelmed.

I was at ten months as well. But somehow, the fresh tragedy and trauma of it had my naive little mind searching for all the hope it could muster. I sussed out any amount of beauty through photography, silence and my children.

Now, life is so busy I can barely focus. "Real life" has fallen into the void that was made and filled it with gusto. I have more to do, accomplish and defeat than I have ever before. I am doing three people's amount of work - raising children, keeping a home filled with a dog, cat and chickens, work to pay for all the necessities....and not managing to make those ends meet. In fact, the ends are often so far apart that I begin to wonder if they are from the same cord.

To supply wood for our woodstove, I have worked out a deal with guy who sells wood - I will go after work on the weekends and chop wood for him. The kids will have to come as I can't afford childcare. All areas of my life seem to be inundated with all these extra obligations in order to creatively patch together some form of relatively rudimentary existence.

I miss Jeff and all he represents so fucking terribly that I am sure I am exhausting my "talk-about-it-whenever-you-need-to card" with my friends. I know that I should be at the point where I am no longer comparing my life "before" to my life "after". But when I am down....It is so hard to forget the fact that life was once so different.

I need to work on smiling. Remembering to see the silver linings. I attempt to drill it into my head and even write crap about how it's not so bad....But it's just hot air. It is bad. It sucks. And I am fucking sick of it. I want to lay down and give up.

**I just want to clear something up as I worry that I didn't explain how thankful I am/was that the firewood guy had accepted my offer of chopping wood in exchange for "free" firewood. He has a family to provide for as well and I don't want it ever to seem that I feel that because I am a widow with two little ones I am exempt from having to pay my way though life. It was so very kind that he accepted my offer. As it turns out, my father paid for a cord of firewood for me saving me the time and effort of having to spend the weekend chopping. I felt truly supported by my small community when I asked if "firewood guy" would let me work for wood.