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kiakaha44

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  1. I don't know if i can remain a member of this board. Since I have come here and been reading all the fresh grief, seems like I have started sliding downhill again. I am being selfish, but I don't want to go back to that pain again; there may be other factors involved, but I don't think I have the energy to fight the dragon that lives in the abyss anymore. I thank you for allowing me to come here. I have some more healing to do obviously.
  2. Dear Don, and Penny... everything you feel is a normal reaction in your grief. There will be many days where you will lose ground and go backwards. This month will make it 18 months without my husband...I still take 3 steps forward and two back. I have finally learned to let those moments of tears and pain and agony just come, and allow myself to go with the emotion I am feeling. I am well aquainted with the flight or fight syndrome. You want to run somewhere and hide from that awful pain inside of you. I am battling that as I speak. But I know that there is nowhere to run to. Grieving is hard physical, mental and emotional work. It drains you of all feeling and leaves this nothingness that numbs your very soul. But with each wave that passes, you become just a little bit stronger. With each passing day that inner core of yours is building layer upon layer...even if you don't feel it...and even if you don't want it. I am living proof(literally) that it will and does become easier with the passage of the days. No one could have told me that just a few weeks ago. I am not trying to minimize your feelings. I am telling you to let yourself feel everything, let yourself cry, yell, rage...everything. This is your journey, and each one is road that only you can and must g odown. Yes, it hurts, I know. I am sending out great big (((((HUGS))))) to you. I have a candle lit in my heart to show you the way. " courage doesn't always roar. courage is sometimes the quiet voice at the end of the day that says: i'll try again tomorrow." This quote I got from someone off of the grief website I used to be on. It became my mantra for living. Keep trying....
  3. To continue... I have been reading the posts on here. I find that I keep being transported back to "the day". This may sound like a journal entry, but I do keep a journal...and it has helped me tremendously just to get it out. I found a grief website about 2 months after my husband passed. It was my rope in the middle of the storm. At times I poured my heart and soul out, and others I could only read and cry. It was good to find that I wasn't alone, but I can't say it dulled the pain any. I am reading that some of you found work to be a release and help to you. I found it was just the opposite. I went back to work about 2-3 weeks after the funeral. It has been the undoing of me ever since. I work in a dental office, trying to put on a good face and comfort patients while I was dying inside, it left me drained of any emotions, ans anything else. I think I need to give a little history here: This job I had...I started in 1998...it was to be my "retirement job", as in=never leave, put down roots, etc. My husband was a retired Marine of 20 years, and we settled in this area. He almost immediately went into severe depression and stayed that way for 2 years. Neither one of us knew what hit us. Yes, he saw pdocs and had medication, but nothing seemed to help. As a result of his depression, his health became compromised. He ended up in the ICU in Feb. of 2000, the night before my birthday, with bilateral pnuemonia, underscored by ARDS( adult respiratory distress syndrome), something I had never heard of before. He was as close to death as he had ever come; stayed on a ventilator for 2 weeks there then was medivacedd to another trauma center 2 hours away. While there he suffered a mini stroke and was never the same after that. I am trying to make this short, really. He had huge memory loss problems. The doctors told me that if he hadn't been so young(41) and in relativly good shape from being in the marines he would not have made it. This major illness helped in the depression dept. soemwhat, as he was not as depressed as before he went in the hospital. I switched pdocs and found a better one for him, but he was also by that time on his way to major addiction to ativan and xanax(anxiety meds). He recovered enough to somehow(and i really don't know how) to land a job as a teacher in a school for deveopmentally challenged children. During that time of respite from our troubles, he started limping real bad. To cut this down--he had avascular necrosis of both hips(his hips had degenrated) due to the massive amounts of steroids given to save his life in the hospital. He would need 2 complete hip replacements(he was now 42). Having those bad hips deteriorated him faster than anything I have ever seen. He was like an 80 yr. old man. And because of the pain involved, was totally addicted to the anxiety meds, and was now abusing them. Here is a man that should have been dead many times over by now, as he started getting into many vehicular accidents, yet noone but me ever tried to stop him from driving. He had his first hip replacement in June of 2002, that went well, but he developed secondary pnuemonia as a result and was rehospitalized. We knew he was at high risk from the ARDS. When he was released again, he was home 2 days and then his sutures ruptured and I found him in the hallway bleeding, he said he didn't want to wake me. Back to the ER we went. That was July 4th. He healed sufficiently to return to work and the hip was helping him walk upright at last. Then we saw just how bad the other one was and decided to go ahead and schedule it. I went into work that Monday( Aug. 19th) and told the front desk girls to block me off of work at a certain time, etc. I went home for lunch and found him in our bed....he was warm....and cold....how is that possible? ( he was 43) When I say I ;lost my mind that day...I did. After all he had been through, and the will he had to somehow survive...he had a heart attack. I read on here someone wrote that every minute or second someone is shreiking NOOOOOOOO!!! Yes, they are. I wrote an entry in my journal about that day...I called it "the knowing". I wrote about how I kept hearing this howl, like from an animal...I didn't know it was me. I wrote about how when my son came from whereever he was( i still don't know who called him), and ran down that hallway...I heard him howl...and I answered it. Back to the job...these co-workers of mine, and my boss...had been through everything with me for 4 years, and they were stunned. I couldn't have asked for a more loving second family than all of them. For 17 months I have struggled to work. I made it 5 days in a row only once in all that time. And I have never made it on time. I have missed so many days that I have now quit my job and applied for disability. My boss refused to let me go, even though I threw my job at him many times over. You see, throughout all those years, somehow I made it . But when Jimmy died, the association with the job, and the lunchtime routine, came to a forefront. My pdoc treid to tell me I had issues with it, but I was in denial. That almost cost me my life. By the time Christmas came along I was at my lowest point ever. I had excluded everything and everyone from my life. I wanted to die. And I tried. I caught myself before anything happened, and the fact that it came about so suddnely scared me mor than anything. I wasn't afraid of death, I was afraid that if I took my own life, I would never see my husband again. That is when, come the first week in Jan, this year. I was in the shower getting ready to go back to work and I broke down. I couldn't do it one more second. Not one more. To have to try and battle the despair and the trying to get there and them calling looking for me , that viscious cycle i had been in...no more. I couldn't do it one more second. That day I checked myslef into a hospital and got some serious help. While there I realized that I could no longer return to work, that my focus on trying to get there and the related stress and repitition of that little drive to and from work, reliving that drive every day---it was keeping me from moving forward. It was the biggest weight lifted off of me in years. Do I have money? No. I have filed for bankruptcy..I have no other choice. Am I moving forward? Yes....finally. I know this is terribly long and I apologize. But you see, we were in the middle of our lives--and it stopped. Everyone has a story to tell, and this is mine. Reading these posts has triggered this "outburst" because of all the fresh pain I see. Its amazing to me that in just a split second I can be transported backwards and feel the pain as fresh and as real as they do. This is why I write, this is why I tell my story over and over and over. Every time you revisit it, another little piece comes to rest...and the healing continues.
  4. Hi Lynda, Thanks for replying to me. I just read your tribute to your husband and I am teared up at the moment. The love between you two is so eveident in those pictures it breaks my heart. That is the kind of love I had. That is the kind of love I miss. This week is going to be a bit rough for me I think, but I will return tomorrow and post more about what's going on with me. I am so glad to have found this site. Thank you for sharing...Susan.
  5. Normal.......a very much overused word I believe. I have wailed like an animal I have raged at God I have lost my faith I have been still-completely I have been numb My memory-gone I have felt more pain than I thought ever possible I lost my appetite for the first time in my life I didn't cook, I ate only when someone made me I have done things that defy anything logical I have pushed and shoved friends and family away I have isolated I became brutally honest Concentration? gone I have given up my job WHO AM I??? My husband was only 43. Yet I exist.
  6. Hi , My name is Susan. I am new to this board, and found it through a link on the ezboards. I lost my husband on August 19th, 2002. I came home for lunch and found him in our bed, he had just passed from a massive heart attack. I lost my mind that day. To say that this past year, 2003 has been the worst of my life is an understatment. It has been so bad that I was recently released from the hospital only 8 days ago; I had checked myself in due to being suicidal. I feel I have turned some corner now, and have accepted the loss. I am also being treated for major depression and ptsd and anxiety. Today, though, I find myself very low. And it is disappointing to me. I don't quite know how to take it. I have been taken off the anxiety meds and gone through withdrawal. My story is so long I can't even begin to put it here. Just suffice enough to say that I lost the love of my life and was ripped in half when he died. I am still trying to find me. We were married for 17years, and together for 18. Trying to wade through this muck called grief has almost killed me. I see a therapist and a psychiatrist, but only had the benefit of some group therapy while in the hospital. It helped me tremendously. I guess that's why i am here....searching for those who understand. Iam told I have "complicated grief" due to having the long goodbye (without knowing it), my husband had several illnesses but got through them all; and sudden death. Is any grief "normal"???? The strength I discovered in the hospital I am afraid I am going to lose it. I know that I have finally accepted his death, that he isn't coming back. But I fear my depression getting the best of me. Can anyone relate to this? Can anyone show me some more insight on this agonizing journey? Yesterday was the 17 month mark. I made it through pretty upbeat and did not shed one tear...the first time ever. And no anxiety meds either. Today I am just depressed....and afraid. I don't want to feel that numbing, all consuming pain again. How do I cope? I am exhausted. Thanks for listening.
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