I know.
It’s been a very long time since I’ve written here.
But then I’ve been in a very dark place for a very long time…since well before Christmas.
I don’t talk to people. I don’t see people. And quite clearly, when I’m down here, I don’t write either.
Finally, after a degree of offspring nagging, and my own internal thoughts, I realised that I couldn’t carry on feeling this way every day, and I finally contacted the Doctors. Who I didn’t really want to bother because, you know Covid. And it’s just grief right?
Only apparently it’s not just grief. It’s complicated grief, and serious depression, and anxiety, and I need to be on meds again, whether I like it or not.
So I am.
Sertraline.
They’re not really helping yet, as it takes anything up to 12 weeks for them to start working, depending on how your brain and biology work. I think they sort of help in the “morning” (I live in a different time zone to you all, thanks to my sleep patterns) for a while after I’ve taken them, and then come the evening when they’re wearing off, and when I’ve finished being distracted by work (the only thing I can actually get done around here, luckily), and that’s it….
…I’m back to anxiety attacks before I go to the shop, or have to meet anyone, or need to join a zoom call (the number of which I have now bailed on is getting embarrassing), or anything. Then there’s intrusive thoughts, memories, floods of tears at random and frequent times, and it hurts so much each time – the loss, the grief, the loneliness, the pain, the fear – it never hurts any less.
I come downstairs at some point. Tash and I figure out some sort of food, which is a fairly random affair, especially as I have absolutely no appetite. We watch crappy TV, I try and hold it together and then it’s bedtime again. And every time I have to climb those stairs, up to a room where he isn’t, to sleep in our bed, it kills me inside. I still kind of expect to see him lying there, waiting for me… I can’t sleep on my side of the bed anymore, because the empty space next to me is too obvious and painful for me. But when I sleep on his side, then I also know I’m sleeping where he died…and…it’s not exactly a win-win situation.
But I can’t even cry myself to sleep. Welcome to insomnia. See, I can’t try and go to sleep until I’m properly tired, otherwise I just lie there and my thoughts go round and round and round in an ever-descending spiral and I end up so upset that sleep is impossible. So they prescribed sleeping tablets too, but neither type have worked, so that was a waste of time. So I play games on the iPad, and then I read, and then finally I reach a point where it feels like it’s finally time…and even then I have to go to sleep listening to a podcast. By then we’re talking 3/4am…if I’m lucky.
Then I wake up around midday, groggy as hell, especially if I was trying the sleeping tablets, hopefully earlier than that (but rarely), but usually in time for work, so I get to work, and the whole shitty wheel turns round again.
And weekends are worse, because I don’t even have work to do, and I can’t summon the energy or motivation to get out of bed, and I have plans for things I’d like to get done, but they just don’t. So it’s just me, my bed and I, and the lovely cups of tea Tash often brings me.
Last week marked 18 months since Matt left us. Not that I expect anyone to remember that, though his family probably do. There’s an additional grief in knowing that they’re out there (oh so wrongly) blaming me for his death, whilst knowing that there is nothing I can do or say to change their minds, because doing so is their coping mechanism. So I have to live with that. I’m sure I make a lovely scapegoat; I am an Aries after all. It doesn’t stop it hurting though. However I do wish I was more in touch with his kids…yet another thing I feel bad about. But the whole situation became so toxic, and things have to work both ways… As ever, I wish things were different. And, as ever, they are not. It’s just such a shame that such tragedy, rather than bringing us all closer together, as it should have, has instead just pushed me out completely. And it’s lonely out here on my own.
I feel so guilty and ashamed of myself for not coping better, for not being stronger, for not being able to hold it together, for not being able to get anything done; in fact for being generally hopeless all round. I feel bad for all the friends I have let down at short notice for plans we’ve made because I just couldn’t cope that day. I get nothing done, I do no exercise, I’m unfit and probably overweight (like I’m going to be stupid enough to stand on the scales right now). I haven’t ridden the bike in two years now. I feel so bad for not being who I was, and for not knowing who I am now. I pretty much hate myself.
I miss all my friends – the pandemic has done a real number on us all in so many ways – and being able to see them would help so much. Since Covid happened, I feel like I’ve been stuck for a year, unable to move forward; paralysed. If anything I’ve gone backwards. As ever, when you think things can’t get worse, they can…
So here I am. Counting down to see if/when the pills help, and hoping beyond hope that they do. I know that they can’t fix the inherent problem, but if they can just bring me up to a level where I can function on a day to day basis, that would be good.
In the meantime, although I don’t talk to people, if anyone would like to message me, through any of the many channels that are available to us all, it’d be good to hear from the outside world once in a while.
If you want me, I’ll be staring at my wall of many treasures, from the security of my duvet nest…
😭💔 I miss him SO much, and still love him just as much 💔😭