three

This morning will mark three years since I've held your warm hand. Heard your snores. Felt safe knowing I was yours.

My life doesn't stop today as it did three years ago....although I partially wish it would. There are appoinments to be attended, childcare to sort out and errands to run.

I'd like to lay in my bed and think of only you. To keen quietly and close my eyes to the empty side of our bed.

But I am terrified that by allowing myself to sink into the grief that still runs so deeply through my heart, I will fall back into that pit of loss. The dark and scary place where time does stop and all I feel is the loss of you.

So I fill my day. To the brim.

I will take the kids to the beach with our notes for you attached to helium balloons. I'll barely allow myself that hour to let the sadness sink in...I need to keep my heart up and my eyes sharp for my little ones.

When this tradition is fulfilled I will begin running again. Focusing on dinner and bathtime. Fingernail clipping and playing referee to intermittent sibling discord.

But after the night has brought quiet and our two children rest, I'll truly feel the loss of you. I'll remember that first night without you. The enormity of the loss. The confusion and unbelievability found in your death. I will cry out for you. I will hold the last dirty shirt of yours close and attempt to smell the long lost scent of you. I will wonder at the ability of others who naively went about their day unaware of this day's significance. And I will miss you as fiercely as I did that first day.

I love you, Jeffrey, with all my heart. I miss you still. And I don't think I can, or will, ever stop.

enough is enough

I admit it. I am depressed. Clinically, situationally, whatever anyone wants to diagnose me as. Depressed.

It sucks. Brutally, royally sucks....And for some reason, I am embarrassed. I don't know if I am humiliated by the weakness that this affliction shows or by the possibility that I am "unfixable" or broken.

After the birth of Briar, I was prescribed antidepressants and attended meetings with a therapist who dealt with post-partum depression. I had been feeling "normal" for quite sometime and had been working with the doctor as I was weaned off the meds.....Then Jeff "bought the farm" (SO sick of using "died", "passed", "left us", etc. I don't think he'd mind if I used more colourful euphemisms...especially if they make me giggle...). His abrupt departure meant the end to my declining medication. I have stayed at the dose I was then. A bloody high dose.

I have been at a point a few times since he "went belly up" where I thought I could resume the lowering of my meds. But since we've moved, that phenomenon has halted all together.

I don't know what has changed aside from working outside the home, Liv attending school, not having my sister or Marnie close by, and the much higher living expenses....Okay, I suppose a lot of shit has changed.

There are truly wonderful things about being here....the beach, the community, the cooler weather....

But I want my garden and my crafts. I want to hang with my kiddos. I want time to sit in the chicken yard and gaze at the "Girlz". I want to again focus on my photography and sewing dresses.

But that time has passed and I have to move on.

I keep focusing on the negative when I should just suck that shit up and move on. I DO NOT want to feel this way. Sad, pathetic, useless, needy.

So I am forcing myself to pull up these bloody itchy socks and face this "Depression Dude" with a sneer on my lips while flipping the bird in his ugly mug.

I have an appointment with my beloved therapist who has agreed to take me on again. I will not allow myself to wallow in the negative (for every bloody issue on my list, I am going to force myself to write something.....happy) and I am making myself go back to my one-good-thing exercise. I don't have the time to do this....But I need to make the time, because I think I am going insane.

I am realizing that it's a damn good thing that I keep this blog. It has chronicled this insidious spiral downward while I was unaware of its' happening. But last night, I sat here and read my posts from the last few months.....and, dude, it was a depressing read.

So wish me luck, I am going to push off from the bottom and attempt to head back up to the surface.

Thank you for all your support, my blogosphere buddies. You rock.

guilt

As the three year anniversary of Jeff's death begins to weigh heavily upon my shoulders, I have been feeling down. All the "small" issues in my life (cracked windshield, accessible childcare, household maintenance, etc.) have become like slivers in my socks. It is impossible to move without their omnipresent reminders and the need to deal with them. At times, I feel as if I could be buried by a thousand little things.
But when I trip, I have you, my community, that reaches back to me and offers to cushion my fall. It feels so very wonderful to know that you are there. Thinking of us. Offering to help.
But it also makes me worry and feel extreme guilt for my pathetic and sad thoughts. It makes me wonder if I am just a sissy. It makes me think, "Come on, Jackie. Pull up your socks! It can't be that bad and, really, you have it better than many others out there in your shoes. Yes, you are having trouble affording the deductible to replace your windshield - but you HAVE a car!"
It's times like these that I am humbled by my life. Humbled by the kindness of stranger/friends. And I am torn. Do I accept help? Or do I take my own advice and "pull up my socks"?
All I know is that I am tired. I am sick of worrying. I am overwhelmed by always feeling overwhelmed. And now, I want to know, is it just me? Or is it an overwhelming situation? Am I not alone in feeling distraught, lonely and exhausted? Is the appropriate reaction to soldier on with my eyes to the ground? Or is it okay to hold my head up and cry out?....Even three years after being widowed?....and is it normal to feel guilt for the thought of considering to accept help?

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.

I' m here. I'm having difficulty feeling "up" and creative. I feel beyond overwhelmed. I feel sad....and somewhat lost.
Liv is struggling in school. Academically she excels....Emotionally she is filled with anxiety and fear. It pains my heart. I want to help her but don't know how. She refuses any support I try to offer in the way of therapists, doctors, etc. I try myself but I am no expert in the way of childhood grief. She is angry....and it spills through our home like a oil slick.
Briar is doing well. He is loving playing L'il Duffers hockey. He's developed an avid interest in dinosaurs. He finds the sadness and stress in the house unbearable.
Life is too busy to comprehend. I am exhausted and sad.
I feel....embarassed that my path through grief has not continued in a steady and linear fashion. I feel like my musings are boring, repetative and redundant. Hence the reason I have rarely posted in the past few months......Sorry. I miss you. I miss your comments and being connected to those out there "in the darkness when I scream - someone can hear".