Day 152

As I was winding down from last night's attack of grief, I remembered something I had written a few weeks ago. Something to the effect of: "You can either be a cork on grief's ocean, getting tossed around by its whims, or you can grab the tiller and steer yourself towards the calm." The point being that I (we) have a choice as to whether I let grief control me or I take control over my life. I consciously chose to be in control. While I know this was the correct decision, it does not make me immune to hitting a rough patch.  Like the one that blind sided me yesterday. 

Today has been better. No rogue waves of grief trying to knock me over. It does get hard though. The timing, intensity and duration of the next assault all unknown. Will it be a week from now or a month from now? Will it be all day or only a few hours? I try to push it out of my mind – it gets easier to that with time and experience  – but it's always there, in the background, niggling at me. Much in the same way that Damian is also always in the background.

Yesterday, during my latest bout with grief, I was not actively thinking of Damian or recalling our history together; I was just suddenly racked with an overwhelming sadness. Sometimes, when I do think of Damian, I experience a moment that feels like I'm teetering on the edge of a precipice, my balance thrown off just enough to turn the fear of possible into the panic (terror?) of it's happening and I can't stop it. After a moment, maybe two, I regain my footing and the panic subsides, but it doesn't go away completely. Remnants of it linger for awhile, like the unpleasant aftertaste of sour milk. I realize that someday I may fall over the edge, but I'm not going to worry about it. At least not too much. I'm going to live my life, the best that I'm able to, focus on what I can control and ignore the rest. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 84

Back home in Georgia. No problems getting here, but things got a little tense between Dawn and I.  I was anxious going to the airport in Tucson because we left later than I would have preferred. Our flight was scheduled to leave just before 3PM, but we didn't leave the house until 1:15. What I didn't know until we were on our way is that it was going to take nearly 40 minutes to get to the airport. It was nearly 2 by the time we there. Fortunately it took almost no time to get our bags checked and through security, but they were close to boarding our flight by the time we got to the gate. Because of all the anxiety I had about getting there on time, I was pretty keyed up by this point. My anxiety led to a miscommunication between Dawn and I as we looked for a place to get a sandwich to take with us on the plane. She thought I took off on her; I thought she wanted to go to another place because she didn't want a sandwich. After a couple of curt exchanges, we both apologized ...
Read more

Day 642

Full disclosure: In social settings, people avoid me. They don’t want to make eye contact with me, nor do they want to talk to me. I’m not approachable. The thing that sucks (for me) is I have no idea why this is.  I went to two corporate dinners this week. On both occasions I felt like an outcast. Conversations were going on all around me but I wasn’t part of any of them. Not really. Heads were turned away from me. At no point did anyone turn to ask me a question or make eye contact to welcome me to the group.  I’ve been in other group social situations where I am talking to someone, 1 on 1, and another person will come up and initiate a conversation with the person I’m already talking to with zero acknowledgement of me or the conversation that I was already having with that person. Rude yes, but also demoralizing.  This is killing my self-esteem. It makes me want to retreat into myself and go live a life of solitude. My reason being that if there is no one else around, ...
Read more

Day 639

I feel really sad today. So much so that I’m cracking open my blog for the first time in forever and writing another post.  It’s been a long time. Too long, in fact. I think I hit a point where I got burned out on writing. Or maybe it was trying to come up with something fresh to say. I don’t know what it was exactly. It just followed the same trajectory as almost everything I’ve ever done in my life - I started out with lots of dedication and persistence only to see it wither and die because I lost interest.  I’m not sure what I’m interested in anymore. Watching TV is thing I do most. Although I have picked up my (acoustic) guitar again. (Let’s see how long that lasts! I’ll be surprised if I’m still playing it by the end of the year. Color me cynical.) Is my lack of interest in life a manifestation of grief or is it something else? Today, I just feel completely tapped out. Like, what’s the point? It’s mostly all just meaningless.  The few areas of my psyche that are not ...
Read more