I’d like to know…

Hi all,

I’d like to know when I’m going to feel like myself again, but I already know the answer. Never. Never, ever, ever will I be the same person I was just three months ago. Or six. Or twelve. The person I was when I was part of an us is now just a me and I am not looking forward to getting to know her. No at all. I don’t want to but know that I have to. I’ve basically been on auto pilot, going through the motions of daily living, but finding no solace in the life I am now living. I pray that changes, but more than that, I pray I can hold on to myself until the sun shines on my life again.

I’d like to know why the grief process is getting harder instead of getting easier. Why? Haven’t I been through enough over the past three and a half years? I know some of what I am feeling is part regret, part guilt and mostly loneliness. I don’t want to acknowledge the loneliness, but it’s there and it’s real and it hurts. So much. I have been talking with my therapist when I can, reaching out to family members and friends, but the void inside me feels bigger every day, not smaller. I’m adrift in the sea of despair and cannot see the horizon beyond the waves.

My heart is still shattered and I know why. That’s not something I’d like to know, to be honest. I know the why of his death, the why of his stroke, the why of his decline. It seems all of the answers I know are not at all the ones I want to know. I want to know how long it will take to be okay. Will I ever be again? I used to think I would be, but now? Now all I see when I look in the mirror is a broken, aimless and sad woman looking back at me. That same woman that was full of fight for her beloved doesn’t seem to exist within me any longer. I want to feel useful, like I have purpose, and I don’t. I don’t know how to move forward. I’m stuck. Bogged down by the weight of grief, loneliness and a longing for my husband that runs so deep I’m drowning in the quicksand of it all.

Before any of you reading this begin to think I am on the edge of hurting myself, please don’t worry that way. I have been in touch with the people closest to me and they know I’m feeling fragile and scared. I reached out to my husband’s Psychologist from the hospice he was in just this morning and she sent me some resources to check out to help me deal with some of the darkest emotions I have ever experienced. I thought, just three years ago, that losing my oldest daughter to the estrangement she forced on to us was hard… It was. We survived. My husband and I held each other up and learned that we could still be happy. We worked really hard at being happy. That event, and the strength it took to thrive seems a precursor to the magnitude of emotion I’m facing now. My husband can’t hold me, he can’t hug me and he can’t encourage me to find my way through the pain. I’m alone in this, but I’m not. It’s a personal journey, but there has to be a side-car available from time to time to allow someone to accompany me. My family has been beyond wonderful, my close friends seem to know when I’m struggling. Letting others in is so not easy, but if I want to come out on the other side of this with even a small portion of sanity intact, I need to keep letting people see my darkness. I believe I can find the open window, in spite of the door that has been nailed shut. I’m just tired of being sad.

I’d like to know that I’d wake up tomorrow with a lighter heart, I just don’t think think it’ll be that easy. I need to find a way to give myself some grace, I say that very thing to the people I love when they’re hard on themselves. Taking my own advice seems like a good idea. It seems like solid, easy advice. It’s easy to give… Not so easy to incorporate into my own life. At least not right now…

Please, send me positive vibes, pray for me and know that I am so grateful that you care enough to read the ramblings of my broken heart. I never thought it would be like this for me, especially since I know with all that I am that my husband is not suffering any more. I wouldn’t wish the suffering he went through on my worst enemy, I’m just not that cruel. I never dreamed that his suffering coming to an end would be the ultimate breaking point for me. I keep thinking that his suffering has ended and mine has just begun. I want to be happy again, I just don’t know how to be. I want to move forward, but I’m stuck…

Until next time…