Grief removes all guard rails

[scba]

14 hours ago, Marg M said:

  We have lost part of us, some of us have lost the best of us.  I know I did.

I did too

[scba]

18 hours ago, KarenK said:

This could not be, but it was. It was the start of what has been the worst years of my life. The days are somewhat easier now, yet still filled with the unending sadness and loneliness that have become my constant companions. Life goes on..............

I feel the same. These have been the worst years of my life and nothing, really nothing, can ammend that. It gets softer, but this softness cannot erase or cancel what these years have been to me. 

Life goes on. I`m scared of it and at the same time I feel I cannot fear anything else. I`ve been killed and have been left alive. 

Peace. Ana. 

[Margm]

40 minutes ago, scba said:

I feel I cannot fear anything else. I`ve been killed and have been left alive. 

Peace. Ana. 

How can any of us feel different?  Those words said it all Ana.

[kayc]

I definitely lost my better half.  And no it never goes away.

[Kieron]

Ana, I understand exactly this sentiment.  Yesterday I kept thinking about how it feels as though my self-confidence took a "body blow" and now things that never rattled or unnerved me, do exactly that.  And it's not something I just casually admit in daily life because guys aren't supposed to be that way, but this is how it is.

And in another conversation, I accidentally made a profound remark.  The person (who is over age 65 I believe), and I were discussing resilience, and I said something like "I think that in life, if we live long enough, our resilience can lose some of its resilience, making it harder to bounce back the way we once did."  Then I had to pause and think, "Wow, where did THAT come from?" 😄  Even the person I was chatting with admitted "That's about right, isn't it?"

[TomPB]

On 5/6/2019 at 8:44 AM, scba said:

I feel the same. These have been the worst years of my life and nothing, really nothing, can ammend that. It gets softer, but this softness cannot erase or cancel what these years have been to me. 

Life goes on. I`m scared of it and at the same time I feel I cannot fear anything else. I`ve been killed and have been left alive. 

Peace. Ana. 

Exactly. I have two opposite approaches. "I've lost my Susan, nothing else can hurt me" and "I've lost my Susan, I can't take one more thing"

[kayc]

I now have a perspective by which everything is measured...NOTHING is as hard as losing George was...I pray the only other one that could feel like that (loss of children/grandchildren) never happens.  I know I'll have to face loss of my dog and cat someday and not too many years away (he's 11, she's 24) and that will be hard as they are all that keep me company nowadays.  They are my incentive.

[Kieron]

Mine is, too.  i avoid reading the Pet Loss section of this forum, because she's about all I have left alive from my life with Mark.

[Gwenivere]

Well, the drama goes on and on dealing with the world, I’d say life but that’s pushing it.  I’m still trying to juggle 4 physical maladies alone and getting more depressed and withdrawn every day.  I’m really glad medicine has so advanced, but when conditions get intertwined and several doctors want all different types of tests or dabble with med doses and you are alone, it’s created a zombie like state for me.  I just want to be left alone from them all.  And because things are so out of control, they want to see me more.  I understand they are trying to help but they aren’t the ones that have to do what they come up with.  I look at where I am compared to 10 years ago before Steve got sick and so long for those days.  I look at repairs needed I haven’t the motivation to do because I’m starting to not care.  I need a new range hood but that means I have to do the being around while they first measure and then get one and install it.  That was Steve’s thing.  I sat at my counselors and just cried.  How did it come to this?  9 years of sliding downhill to this.  I don’t even have enough energy to be mad anymore.  I need what little I have to get out of bed and get thru the day I try and fill as they are all so empty.  My counselor did the math on how much anxiety meds I was taking and it was half of my daily doses.  That explains my feeling so uncomfortable going out and waking feeling withdrawl.  I don’t even know how it happened.  The repetitious loneliness and craving for him is indescribable.   I know I don’t have to because you all know the feeling.  I so want to care about something, someone.  I want to be eating a home cooked meal than sitting at the table again in silence.  I saw changes in the neighborhood that will wipe out beautiful vegetation to build more apartments and increase traffic.  I’d daunt be talking to him about that and I know he would be as upset as I am.  I want to be grumbly with him again.  The changes in our little world.  But it’s me, the furry kids sandwich Nd a bag of chips.  It’s all so cold.  Someone here said 'I was killed but left alive'.  So very true.  Lifecgoes on, I see it every day.......like a ghost.

[kayc]

9 hours ago, Gwenivere said:

Lifecgoes on, I see it every day.......like a ghost.

Very poignant way of expressing it.

I've been on half my anxiety medicine for years, full dose wouldn't change anything, the point is, I feel alone and still miss George each and every day, how can a pill change that?  I only take it because living through this makes me feel very alone and troubles can overwhelm.  I'm not hit in the daytime as much as at night.  If he was snuggled up against me, my nighttimes would be peaceful.

 

[Margm]

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.

At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.”

And we all know C.S. Lewis's quotes.  That is my life.  When I am alone, and it is not often, I am afraid.  I do take the Xanax, sometimes 1 mg in the daytime, every night 1 mg to sleep.  Am I worried about addiction?  Not at all.  I learned something typing medical transcription, the phrase "quality of life vs. quantity of life."  If I take too much Xanax, it works less for me, but I take it when I need it.  I cannot get my prescription refilled before "time" so I am careful.  It helps me.  And "me" sometimes needs my own care.  Sometimes Bri gets miffed at me.  I hear what I want to hear.  They did clear up my ears though at the doc's office and now I hear fine.  I can hear the tinnitus crickets, but they do not annoy me and at night the ear buds and "sleep" music makes them shut up.  

We do what we have to do.  I mentioned before, my dad knew he was terminal but was afraid of getting addicted to pain pills, so he would hurt and would not take them.  I cannot follow up that statement with anything but I am sorry he had to suffer pain, but I did not mind reading to him to try to sooth his pain.  

[Gwenivere]

Your post is so right on, Marg.  I find so much of what others say uninteresting.  I don’t like feeling that way, but I can’t make myself care.  I hope it comes back.  I had it for a time.  Then all the medical stuff stated snowballing and I went into survival mode.  And, for the gazillionth time, the smoking quit has me feeling the worst I have ever felt.  I’m not expereriencing all the good stuff I read in the groups.  

I’m in the ER ahhhhhhhhgain because of breathing issues and starting a new thyroid med and waiting for the overdose of a part of the old one to clear my system.  It’s all so very complicated and all I could do was come here for some reassurance.  5 hours so far.  Took 3 to get a room of which I was moved out to the hallway as they needed the room for someone else.  I’m stuck waiting on a chest X-ray reading before they will give me my paperwork.  The place is being remodeled so they are down 4 rooms and logically someone else who needs it could get their stuff going.  But I feel like a piece of trash parked here.  I’d just leave but I want my lab results so I don’t have to go to medical records to get them.  Because I’m so stressed I’m trying to stay angry and not panic.  

The dogs are going to go nuts when I get home, I have no dinner for myself laid out and I need to fill my med boxes for a couple weeks.  What is it about being in grief and having bigger challenges added?  Some kind of cosmic sick humor?    Sorry, I’m losing it here.  Thank gawd it’s almost Xanax time.   

No reply needed to this really.  Just keeping my fingers busy while I think about all I have to do when I get home which means missing my sanity nap.  We’re supposed to take care of and be kind to ourselves, but this is a tough one.  Trying to decide to really whack it out and get MacDonalds on the way home which will sit badly, but it’s food.  

 

[kayc]

I'm sorry Gwen, and by now I hope you're home and sleeping it off, sounds like a horrid way to spend the night. 

 

[Gwenivere]

I record and watch Jimmy Kimmel and jimmy Fallen.  Both shows always end with a band.  I’m usually playing a game on my iPad, but I hear the songs.  I’ve heard some beautiful ones and will watch the performers and they are young.  Love songs at that beginning of their journey.  I appreciate the music, but get so sad missing those days and how far we came from that youth.  The being so consumed with that person.  I think about if Steve were here I would smile when I heard them.  Now they trigger such longing and sadness.  Open the door to knowing this was the one.  The door that got shut.  

[KarenK]

Gwen,

I made it though my whole life without watching "A Star Is Born", despite all the remakes. I decided to watch this latest one. I made it all the way to the end before the tears threatened. Guess that's why I mostly watch crime dramas.......................

[Margm]

Karen, I saw all of them but the first.  Being from the "Silent Generation," the one that lost Kristofferson was the bad one for me.  Love Barbra singing, don't care for the woman, so did not feel sorry for her.  I cried at this one, but I cry at the Progressive Insurance commercials.  And, this "me too" movement has opened up women to tell things on men that my generation just ignored.  I worked one week with my sister-in-law (professional waitress) at a truck stop.  I have never been propositioned, grabbed, and pinched so much in my life.  To me it was like pesky flies, just knock them out of the way.  It is a good movement, women feel more in power, but everyone is afraid to even call anyone "shug, honey, sweetheart" or any of the names that were insignificant to me.  Silent generation indeed.  And, I prefer the crime drama too, I like to see the women win too, but love Denzel Washington in the two Equalizer movies.  We have watched Jennifer Lopez in "Enough" at least five times.  I still cry every time I hear "The Shallow" anyhow.  Reading is still my favorite.  Have you discovered the author J.J. Jance?  Love the Arizona Brady books, but like all of her books.  Oh yes, my granddaughter has me watching all the Marvel movies.  She would rather go with her grandmother than a group of friends.  I'm honored. 

[KarenK]

Marg, have read all the J.A. Jance except the newest one. Have a few more to go of  Margaret Coel and Dana Stabenow. Have started in on Karin Slaughter. Her stuff is pretty raw. Fortunately , my mind does not remember the "bad stuff" once I close the book. Like to watch action movies also. Just mundane things to fill up the hours.

[Margm]

Karen, I put down my Margaret Coel ones.  The last book she wrote will be the last of the Wind River Reservation mysteries and I refuse to read the last  one, if I know it, of any.  Will miss them, but have to remember they are Margaret Coel's inventions to begin with.  I like "not remembering" sometimes.  

[Gwenivere]

I only saw the new Starcis Born and thought it was spectacular.  I really liked how they handled his death scene without showing it and was in tears at her singing The Shallow ar the end.  It was a good cry tho.  The cry we all know about.  That unnecessary loss.  The loss we could not stop.  

[Gwenivere]

Well, had my first physical fall last night alone.  Luckily I knew it was happening unlike when I had been taken down by surprise by dogs at the dog park so I didn’t  get hurt, but it so emphasized how alone I am.  I remember Steve fell a few times and you definitely hear it.  Being much older now it is a big fear.  I didn’t even feel shock.  Just.....old and alone.  Where was my champion?  My hero?  The love of my life?  It didn’t feel more serious than a light bulb needing changing that is hard for me to reach.  I’m so empty inside without him.  I never feel safe any more.  Rhetorical, but I again wonder how I will ever find a reason to keep getting up without him.  As age catches up with me I want to share the winding down with him like so many older couples I see everyday.  I imagine then as the young people they were and still holding hands now.  How they don’t see age when they look at each other.  They see love.  

[kayc]

I'm sorry you fell, Gwen, but very glad to hear you didn't get hurt!  I have never managed to escape injury when falling, my first one was in June 2011, and a week later another.  Then in May 2017 and again in August 2017.  Every time there was a reason for it, tripping on something, not just imbalance.  Hoping not to do that again!  I did get taken down by a dog a year ago in June when he attacked my dog, only got bruised that time.

Here's to staying upright!

[Margm]

I do blame my fluffy (that is as close as I'm gonna get to fat) behind on saving me once or twice.  Being so close to the ground anyhow, I've managed to catch hold of something, but that one step-off at the movie theater landing my whole body weight on my left knee is still not healed, but I have two heated massage chairs (which I do not expect miracles from) coming in this afternoon.  Know I will sleep in the recliner.  I never see people anymore, I am looking at the ground.  Know I am not immune from a fall.  Just hoping not.  I'm sorry Gwen.  It scares me, which is just one of many things that scare me.  

Has anyone heard from Cookie, I believe of North Carolina.

[Gwenivere]

She has been absent a long time.  I don’t know a way to see when she last was here.  I now she had gotten her poodle.  Seems she was having other problems tho. 

Marty?.  Can you tell us?

[MartyT]

1 hour ago, Gwenivere said:

Marty?.  Can you tell us?

No, Gwen, I've not received an update from Cookie either. You might try sending her a personal message . . .

[mittam99]

6 hours ago, Gwenivere said:

She has been absent a long time.  I don’t know a way to see when she last was here.  I now she had gotten her poodle.  Seems she was having other problems tho. 

Marty?.  Can you tell us?

Gwen, looks like she last visited here a couple weeks ago.