Exhaustion-Fueled

This week has certainly been challenging in the way of working to meet too many deadlines, commitments and responsibilities.

This week I was faced with the dubious tasks of studying for a psychology exam, learning four songs for tomorrow night’s rehearsal and working like gangbusters to get a presentation finished in record time at work. My brain has enjoyed zero down time and zero down time is never a good thing where grief is concerned.

I studied for five and a half hours yesterday for tonight’s exam. My work paid off, but by the time I headed to bed last night, I was so wracked with anxiety and grief that I cried until I fell asleep.

Today I left work and took a walk for twenty minutes because I allowed myself to reach a dangerous level of stress that caused my body to feel numb.

Tonight, I am allowing myself some relaxation before I dive into the sheet music and make certain that I know my harmonies in four of the songs we are performing in our show, which opens in three weeks.

My life is not usually this crazy, but boy, I really packed it full of stuff this week.

My point is that I still have meltdowns when my life gets too busy and every single time I melt down, my anxiety and exhaustion resolve into grief. I feel almost powerless to stop my upsets from morphing into grief from my loss of Chris. There is usually a split second where I know that I’m not crying about my loss before I do a 180 and go there. I don’t know how much longer I am going to behave this way. Months? Years? Decades? Maybe the rest of my life? And am I pathetic for still grieving? Perhaps in the eyes of some.

I am very much looking forward to talking with Diane, the grief counselor, this Thursday. Diane also lost her husband so she will be listening to me from a different perspective than that of Clay’s. She will know what I am feeling and hopefully why. She will be able to answer my questions about how long I am going to melt down. She can tell me why I am still so angry even after two whole years and why I can’t seem to let go of my former life, even though everybody around me thinks that I have. It’s too hard. I can’t do it. I can have happy moments and happy days...happy weeks, even, but I just can’t let go. I am so angry that this happened. I angry that the man I loved is gone and that I have the stigma of “widow” attached to me. I am still very freaked out about what happened. I still experience anxiety on a daily basis and I still feel like screaming.

Granted, I nixed all of my antidepressant meds. I’m not taking them. I ‘m done. They don’t work, anyway, at least not long-term. My body adjusts to the dosage and then I have to keep increasing and increasing and I am just not willing to do that.

I try very hard to not to wish Chris was here because that wish is pointless. Instead, I try to allow myself to miss him, but I’m beginning to feel like that restriction is not feasible, anymore because I do wish he was here and I constantly ask myself, “Why not him? Why not me?” People survive cancer every day. Why couldn’t he? Why do I not get to be with him. I wonder who he would be today if he was here.

I’m looking forward to talking with Diane and I am terrified of talking with her.