Our trip to the Bahamas. She had a good time, I pretended to for her sake.
No one can describe the ebb and flow of grief accurate enough to explain just how deep the hurt is when you are on a downswing. How dark your thoughts become, and how much this changes you. The anger, sadness, apathy, (not to mention feeling the most alone I have ever felt in my life) occurs when I am having a particularly bad day. Today is such a day and now is such a time.
This is what I want to yell at people but don’t, because they wouldn’t be able to understand it. They would want to fix me when there isn’t anything wrong with me. They would want to try to relate to me when they still have their spouse and kids to go home to. There is a dark anger, and time and internal reflection is the only chance I have of dealing with it.
You – can’t – relate to it. The mere suggestion that someone has the answers to cure me missing my dead wife pisses me off to no end.
I can’t spare the energy to make others feel better by smiling at them all the time. It is exhausting to pretend to be ok.
See, I’m aware of my depression, and more or less I am able to deal with it on a daily basis. By deal with it, I mean act normal enough so I don’t have to deal with people’s stupid fucking questions. But it takes mental effort to constantly have to keep things in perspective and not go apeshit on someone. To keep it together and function when all you want to do is sit in the dark and be left alone.
I can go through a day and act the way I would normally act if I felt ok, and no one is the wiser. I had a lot of practice trying to give as many normal days to Felecci as possible. Pretending to have a good time so that she could forget for a little while that she was dying. The truth is, I haven’t enjoyed much of anything in probably 9 years. Not like a kid enjoys Christmas. Everything has had a subtext just beneath the surface, waiting to ruin it just as soon as I let my guard down.
Post-loss, these feelings are intensified. It actually affects me physically; I have been going to doctors for a while to try to work out what is going on with various health issues I have been experiencing and nothing comes back out of the ordinary. Sleep varies, and often 6 hours and 11 hours doesn’t feel any different. Nothing appears to be wrong with me, yet I continue to feel like shit.
I am tired. A large part of me just wants this all to be over with. I simply lack anymore fucks to give about anything and am just living day to day without a goal. I force myself to continue on mostly because I promised her I would. But I. Am. Tired. She is gone, and I don’t know what I am still supposed to do here?
I wonder if this is the fate of a man who provides for his family. To be secretly miserable but unable to rest because others depend on him. So we put up a front that only lasts as long as we have a purpose. Take away that purpose, and what is left? Why go through it anymore?
At some point, after a lifetime of working hard, aren’t you supposed to get ONE fucking thing that you want? Why does family get to bother me when they fuck up their own lives, yet I don’t even get a chance to start mine?
This has made me so bitter. I dislike who I am becoming, but how do you “look on the bright side” when you just want to punch the next person who presumes they have any fucking standing to give you advice? I don’t want thanks. I sure as fuck don’t want pity. Because most normals do not understand and presume that their own problems are always the most important thing. Here is a hint, I don’t care about your problems; I am having a hard enough time caring about myself.
I am resigned to the fact that I will be unhappy for a very long time. But I will not make you feel better about yourself when you add to my burden. I don’t have the energy to cheer you up. You came to the wrong place for optimism.
What I want is not in anyone’s power to give. In this condition, I am not much good to anyone who is looking for compassion or love. I have too much anger toward life and god. I feel dead inside. Anger, sadness, & depression are the only feelings I still fully feel. Everything else is muted. I remember what they are, but I don’t feel them the way I used to.
I will work on what I can control and hope that these moods get further and further apart. I am told that they do. Maybe I’ll have some more clarity in the future and look back and regret how I was during this period. But I can’t continue to pretend I am ok, I need to save my energy for surviving, and focus on how I am going to live with this and function in society.
I’ve earned my right to be pissed off. I’ve got my cross to bear, pick yours the fuck up and carry your own damn baggage. I need to spend some energy on myself or I don’t know if I am going to make it.
I am out of fucks to give. I don’t want to do this anymore, but I have to. Fuck I’m bitter.
Life Love and Loss 