I have about a dozen topics in my “Real life posts” file. Some of them are just titles of posts I want to write (some of these have handwritten notes strewn throughout three notebooks I have had with me at work), some of them have a little outline, a couple are mostly written. None of them make sense to me right now. In the last couple of days, I started to write two others – new ones – but couldn’t complete them. I would get to a certain point and just stare at them.
Monty died ten days ago – part of me still doesn’t get how he could be gone.
It’s happening again – I am lapsing into numbness, just staring at the computer screen. Let’s see if I can push through this time. This time I am expecting nothing of myself but to write what’s going on. I have a voice in me that says, “Enough of this personal stuff – get back to the grocery store.” My friend Johanna said to me some weeks ago, “If you don’t write when you are down, it will have no integrity.” Some of my readers are liable to say, “He thinks he’s got losses.”
I haven’t cried over Monty yet. I guess it will happen when it’s meant to.
A few weeks ago, my target was to post every morning. I have now missed two mornings and am at risk of missing another.
People keep telling me how well-written this blog is. I think this post will be a little incoherent. I have to live with that.
I have an appointment in about two hours with a CarePartners bereavement counselor. I have a voice in me that says that I have no right to use a bereavement counselor. Monty was not family to me, just my buddy – my 35-year best buddy.
I’ve gotten some good hugs in the last ten days, but they’re tending to not get through.
And what about other recent losses? My dog died 15 months ago. I thought I was well over that one. Back in September, my stepbrother Joe, my roommate from three years previous Avtar and my dear friend Nina died within a week of each other. In the last many months, three people from church with whom I was not intimate but with whom I had real relationships (Laurie, Sandy and Carol) have died. I’m trying on a new concept (to me), that some or a lot of the depression I experience on a regular basis (including now, the last three four days) is really grief – grief at the loss of the internal light, of my good feelings, of my self-confidence, of my capacity to see connections in the world. And that this accumulates, showing up every couple of weeks.
I feel alone whenever I’m depressed – how is this different?
Maybe I have an accumulation of old griefs that pile on when I have a current (kind of enormous around Monty) grief in real time. Maybe I am short on skills for grieving. Maybe if I go through the CarePartners six-week bereavement class, and then maybe join a bereavement group, I will get better. Maybe posting this – taking my grief to this community – will help.