Just Here

I'm just here. Not writing. Exercising is hard, and makes my body hurt. Since I came up with the brilliant theory that I will hurt with or without exercise, I'm going with the "with"...

Lots of hot flashes at night, interrupting sleep.

Am reading Nicholas Sparks for tips on the craft of just getting on with the story, without all the business.

I expect that my period will start soon, and this is the pre-game show. When I am exercising, I feel strong and jockish... but things quickly deteriorate when I contemplate where my life has ended up.

I'm so far from home. So far from where I thought I'd be, or even imagined where I might be. So very far.

I Really Do

I see dead people.

In my dreams.

Last night, it was my brother. He was around the house, organizing or bossing something, and I ignored him. Later in the dream, I had to turn to him and apologize.

"Oh, I'm SO sorry. I was ignoring you as is my wont. But I forgot that you're dead, and so that was rude of me when you've come to visit me." Forehead slap. "Want a beer?"

I then had to go out in the front yard to ask the neighbors to move their cars from my front lawn. In the dream, that is. They were very polite, so for now, they were not zombies.

Introvert v. Extrovert

(please note, Keirsey people: it is EXTROVERT, not extravert, for the love of god.)

As previously mentioned, I have started testing as an I instead of an E in the MBTI personality type tests. I have two theories about this.

1. I have always been a "slightly expressed extrovert." That is, I was a few degrees into E territory. Now that I've lived a while, and gotten used to myself, know myself more, I am now testing more on the other side of neutral, as "slightly expressed introvert." A change by a few degrees, but nothing earth-shattering.

2. I am grieving and DIFFERENT, and am testing as an introvert, because of the decided lack of interest that everyone has for interacting with someone who is grieving. No one wants to hear about it past a month. No one cares, apparently. You get a lot of "I wish I knew what to say." Yeah, well, if you have that much trouble reaching within to find something for me, then either you are shallow and not good friend material, OR you have some block about the whole thing, and I really need friends who grok the grief thing, even if they are projecting, intuiting and guessing, rather than working from experience.

Maybe it's both. I find myself feeling closer to people who have lost someone they love to death. It's not enough that they don't get along, or have been shunned or whatever. There's still a chance of a conversation.

I remember acutely hearing my mother's voice on the answering machine months after she died. I saved and saved that message. When I changed accounts, I made a special point to record the message so I would have it always. I know the words by heart.... it wasn't her last message to me but it was the "wedding" call.

When I went to record it, somehow it was gone. I'd saved and saved it... for months. Resaved and resaved. But it was just ... gone.

Yeah.

So maybe I'm not a very fun person to be around, and that's why I withdraw from folks. My interactions lately are not satisfying and "energizing" me. They deplete me. (Ha ha, Jerry McGuire joke.) I just cleared out my In Box, for example. At least four messages have made me physically cringe. I'm cutting down on the volume of email, but still having to deal with it pulls me down.

The phone calls. Thank god for Caller ID.

It's almost mind-numbing to think of how taxing it all is lately.

And so what I wonder is: is this permanent? will it change when I'm "done" grieving? what am I missing by not "getting back on the horse"?

If I were to get back on the horse, where the hell is it?

(Jots down on list "Look for the Horses.")

Inconsolable

One thing my shrink did help me with (though I still have issues with how he left things with no closure, like stale bread)... my moods do seem to dictate how I'm doing re: grief. When I'm rested and well-fed, exercised and satisfied, I am in a pretty good mood and therefore, I can handle the grief and loss. (or is it the other way around? when I'm coping ok with the grief, my mood is good?)

but a critical mass of sleepy/tired, hungry, angry and lonely, and watch out - everything is hell in a henbasket (ha ha). I'm bordering on that for a couple of reasons.

One, I started a new teaching job and it's demanding a big amount of energy. Sustained energy for prep and for actual teaching. It's a long class so there's no way I can just skate. However, I am learning about pacing, and giving them time to talk. And they are a good group. Not a bunch of entitled snobbish teenagers, which was the "gene pool" I used to teach.

But still, that's a lot of human contact, responsibility and focus, and there is no ramp-up. Come classtime, it is ON, and I'm in charge. Not sure exactly how I feel about that anymore.

Secondly, tomorrow is the anniversary of my brother's death. His ashes are still not completely dealt with, and the family is having trouble coming to a consensus on dates for scattering. It involves a rather elaborate trip somewhere to honor his wishes... while I know he doesn't care wherever he is, which he believed was nowhere... it is a dangling chad that needs to be dealt with.

Thirdly (did I say only two things?), I haven't been sleeping well at all. Like hardly at all. I am aware of the passage of time, I sleep so lightly. I had a dream last night about moving back to my old town and asking for my old job back, and that somehow it would be all wonderful and cheerful with those co-irkers that I really really couldn't stand (which is why I left in the first place!). So, yeah, very very weird dream.

In the end, I'm really at a loss on how to grieve. I need to move on, but there are still so many dangling chads. I wonder if time will heal them, or if I need to actively do something. I'm so busy, and not in a really good way either. And I get no feedback from my dead family members. That's the roughest thing. I want to tell them, "hey, this is what I'm doing to honor you, to remember you. I miss you all." Just a little contact, a little encouragement from them would be nice.

So yeah, that's why I feel inconsolable. There doesn't seem to be any closure to this grief stuff. No consoling, no satisfaction. I understand now why married couples sometimes die close to one another... it's easier to do that, than it is to figure out how to move on. But I'm a young (ish) woman with a half-grown kid, so I'm in the big middle of life. Waiting for death is not an option.

World Poker Tour

As I move through this new phase in my life, I am sorting through what used to make me happy, what used to turn me on, and what now does. Also what totally backfires for me now.

Used to give me a buzz:
eating almost anything
a cold can of Coca-Cola
food
herbal cigarettes (this was a long long time ago)
going to bars
drinking esp. tequila, gin, vodka, wine
pesto (mmmmm)
chocolate (mmmm)
Blue Bell
writing
reading esp. fiction
lots of other things

Given that my cholesterol, body pain and grief have become much larger factors in my life, I don't get the same buzz from booze. I love collecting wine and enjoying A glass, but it's a slippery slope after two glasses. I stopped getting a buzz, and began to get the hangover right away.

I need to lose 25 lbs. I lost 17 but gained it back. So I'm doing WW. But it doesn't give me a buzz. It's slightly annoying, but the results are worth it.

No, what gives me more pleasure now are non-caloric things.

expensive yarn
sometimes, knitting with that yarn
my walking fur pelts (dogs, two)
shooting (video games, arrows, guns)
watching Mr. Curmudgeon himself, Dr. House
and
the World Poker Tour.

Oh boy, the thrill of professionals playing Texas Hold Em, for millions in chips... the sweaty upper lips, the tells, the hushed commentary... the WINNING. Oh yeah! awesome!

Yes, it makes me happy. But wow, what an old fogey I've become. Who the hell am I?

(And where the hell did my love of reading go? is it my glasses? is it the crapification of fiction these days? all those chick novels and the pulpy airplane fodder? this dilemma - it's maddening!)

I See Dead People

I am certain that one of the most primary factors of what is going on with me right now is that I see dead people.

They are everywhere. In my house, in my life, in my heart. My mother died in 2003, my father and eldest brother in 2007, within six weeks of each other. I have one brother remaining, a handful of nieces and nephews and cousins who are distant.

I am divorced too, single mother to one son. The (ill-advised) marriage died, perhaps before it ever drew breath.

Somewhere in all this dying, divorce and turmoil of the past few years, I died too. I look in the mirror and I see someone else. 20 lbs heavier, I type-out on the MBTI as an I now, where about 10 years ago, I was an E. (Extrovert v. introvert).

My aunt died last fall. She was the one who had all the family memories. She was sharp as a tack until the last time she laid down in her bed at home. They broke out the emergency pain meds, and she floated out on morphine and terminal cancer. And all those memories died too. All the stories. The artifacts remain - those that she kept and that my cousin did not throw away. Those artifacts are in a box in my office. They are unconnected dots because the family is dead.

Everything I've ever known about who I am and what family I come from is gone. All I have is memories, disconnected. I've got a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle and only about half of the pieces anymore. Most people could enjoy the bit of lake that did get put together, or half of a big-eyed kitten. I'm only able to see the gaps, the lost pieces.

I've spent more than 10 years being a Good Mom. Now that the lad has begun to turn into teenager, all that hard work seems to be for naught. No one looks at the mother of a teen and says, "ah, what a good mom." The pudding is cooked, so to speak. Though I do know there are important months and years of parenting still to come, my 24x7 vigilance is not essential.

So what do I have left? Visions of people dying, young and old (brother died at 60 - that's young.). I held my mother as she died, I spent many hours with my father at the end, and I witnessed my brother in extremis. I've looked into the faces of the people I love, the people who made me, who raised me, and I've seen death.

Moreover, I've seen myself old and dying. I've seen it like it was today. And the way I feel in my body, the way I feel in my heart, it IS today. And so I wake up every day like it's the last. That, unlike the country songs, makes me feel like it's over, not like it's time to live. Or at least it's an uphill climb to live, to function like I'm part of the world here and now, instead of the world that is gone from my sight.

The emotions and moods come and go, but the simple loss of identity, the loss of people who cared about me on a cellular level - that's the hardest thing to deal with. The world that passed is more real to me. The world I live in now is foreign, bewildering, difficult.

Maybe I am coping... grieving, as the shrinks like to say, but it's just vastly different, and a lot less glamorous, than I thought it would be.

Edited to add: while I say that I wake up every day like it's the last, I do still wake up and have some kind of interest and impetus for living. I always look forward to what the day might bring. I'm decidedly NOT suicidal. I don't WANT to die at all. I don't WANT to be in this limbo between life and the beloved dead, but I am.