Taking another "Leap of Faith"

[kayc]

Gin,

I'm so sorry about your grandson, I hope they figure it out.  My uncle was epileptic.  Nobody wants to have it but at least they have medicine for it nowadays.  100 years ago they treated it so differently.

I am sorry so many of you feel despair.  I felt that at first too.  It was a very panicky alone feeling.  I still feel it from time to time but not as often or as bad.  I think it's harder because I'm getting older now, I don't relish growing old alone but here I am.

[Widowedbysuicide]

I agree with your comments Kay.  

[mittam99]

We all feel a sense of despair. How could we not? Our world as we knew it was torn apart and the place we now inhabit is a world filled with emptiness. The loneliness and sadness are pervasive. All of us have these feelings. I think where we all are different is in how we proceed in our journeys. For a long time I was right there with so many others. I couldn't see my life as anything but a miserable one. And the truth is, this life is pretty unbearable.

But, I've always been a glass half full guy. I've tried to live my life thinking that things would get better. I'm not always right though. I truly thought Tammy was going to get better. She always bounced back. I thought we would live happily together forever and always. Now alone, my days are mostly monotonous and dreary. But, I have been able to adapt to the loneliness of my new life to an extent (not entirely by any means). The tears still flow often and I yearn for Tammy 24/7. 

It's just that I am not capable of maintaining my sanity living my life in misery 24/7. I have to "dole out" my grief in bursts. The sadness and longing will always be there because Tammy was my life, was my everything. But I have to cling to certain thoughts to be able to function. Cling to the hope that Tammy is still out there in some form. That I will be reunited with her someday. That she can hear me when I talk to her. Now, to some, those thoughts may defy logic. But this is how I've chosen to proceed on my grief journey. I simply refuse to believe that Tammy's amazing spirit, her soul, could simply stop existing.

Having said that, I'm not suggesting others follow my lead. You have to live your life the best way you can and do it in a way that suits you. It's just that I can't imagine how torturous it must feel to not have a sense of hope. To feel that life will never get better in the future.

Mitch

[Gwenivere]

There are some things that aren't choices.  This is one.  You may be right, Mitch, maybe it is temperament.  But my temperment was just dandy til this happened.  That is why I don't even recognize myself.  I didn't even know about this part of me.  I'm not sure it even existed before.

I was talking with my counselor this week and she interlocked her fingers between the first and second knuckles saying many relationships are tight in an interdependent ways.  Then she locked both hands tightly together saying others are intensely intermeshed....a you and me against the world.  Those are the hardest to lose.  I felt something similar to this when I lost a best friend of decades and that was not even to death.  It haunted me for years.  I look at this loss and go.....sh*t!  I couldn't reach out to restore it as was an option with her.  

All I can do is deal with my so called life as it is now.  Looking down the road I am blind.  A book on grief I am reading says we find ourselves waiting.  Waiting, waiting, waiting......and not knowing for what.  Steve and I were not waiting.  We just took each day as it came and for the most part, they were good days.  The farthest we looked down the road was what we were going to do tomorrow.  

[kayc]

I've learned you can't talk someone out of their grief or their despair.  It's their's to deal with, to figure out or live with, however they choose to.  We can't do it for them, we can't carry them, we can't change them.  I imagine the time period in which people are incapacitated varies from person to person.  I haven't found a timetable by which to measure how someone is doing at any point in time.  I only know how I felt at different periods of time on my journey.  I have learned that I have choices and that I can make my journey better or worse by my attitude and choices, but I can't apply that to anyone else...their choices and attitudes are their's alone to determine.