A new day, a new rock bottom

I think I may have fallen into an abyss from which there's no escape.

My grief counselor, my therapist, folks I've met in online grief support groups, my family, my friends... everything they say grates on me. "Inspirational" memes enrage me. Cliche, pithy sayings designed to give strength only make me want to grab the person sharing them by their shoulders and shake them and scream, "YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT I'VE LOST! I have nothing without Doug. I AM nothing without him." And it's true: I'm dead, but I'm still breathing. Everything in me that felt life was worth living - everything in me that made me ME - died with him. It's torture to live knowing that it's never going to change. And I do know that, no matter what anyone else tells me: maybe you have hope, but I don't.

David Kessler is a well-known expert on grief and loss and healing. He's been hosting a Facebook live session every day to provide some "face-to-face" grief support at a time when we're all so isolated. He's wonderful: warm, compassionate, eloquent. I consider him the Fred Rogers of grief in that, when he's talking, it feels as though he's talking just to me, and it's soothing and comforting.

But nothing that David Kessler says, or that anyone says, sticks with me. As soon as it's back to just me, in the silence of my empty house, I know the truth that no one else seems willing to accept: I'm not going to make it without Doug. I'm reminded of Red's monologue in The Shawshank Redemption (edited):

There's a harsh truth to face. No way I'm gonna make it. Terrible thing, to live in fear. All I want is to be back where things make sense. Where I won't have to be afraid all the time.

If this were a movie based on a Stephen King novella and directed by Rob Reiner, I would go on an epic road trip - a quest, if you will - and at the end of it, I'd find myself on a beach, with Doug waiting for me. The music would swell, we'd fall into each other's arms, and then it would fade to black: our happy ending.

But it's not a movie. Doug isn't waiting for me on a beach somewhere. Instead, he's either completely gone, or off on the next plane of existence doing whatever it is he wants to do (which clearly doesn't involve contacting me). Not being able to feel any of the love he gave me so freely in life is beyond painful: it's devastating, it's demoralizing, and it's killing me one empty minute at a time.

On top of missing Doug, there's a pandemic racing around the globe. The worst of human nature shows itself daily in the people hoarding food supplies and toilet paper and going about doing whatever they want with zero regard for the people they're putting at risk. Our government's leadership is seriously suggesting that getting everything back to business (to save the economy) is a higher priority than the lives of people at the highest risk of dying. Our government is effectively saying, "we're gonna let more people die so long as it's good for the stock market." And the President's approval rating is higher than ever, even as he's making it clear that money - not people - is what matters.

And I'm supposed to try? I'm supposed to build a new life in a world where apathy and selfishness and greed rule everything AND I don't have Doug to love me? Why, exactly? Because I still have some purpose to fulfill? Fuck that. I've done my part. I've tried to be a good person. I haven't always succeeded, but I've tried. Even when life kept kicking me and kicking me and kicking me, I tried. But this kick was one too many. I can't get back up from this. I don't want to. I spent my whole life without love, and I managed to keep getting up. But to finally get it and then lose it again? No. I'm sorry, but I can't. I won't.

Maybe I won't physically die yet (because I've promised I won't kill myself and I'm going to keep that promise), but I'm irreparably broken. I'm looking at my house, which is cluttered with mail, and boxes, and art supplies, and clean-but-unfolded laundry - my house that needs who the hell even knows how many repairs - I look around, and I don't even care. I don't care about the clutter. I don't care about the dust bunnies. I don't care about the dishes in the sink. I don't care about the repairs that need to be made. I don't care about anything. Let the house fall down around me; I don't care. Let me lose my job and end up forcibly removed from the house and living on the streets; I don't care, because none of that means anything without Doug.

I don't even want to talk to anyone anymore. It's an exercise in futility, because they think that I need to just hang in there when I know there's no point; they think I'm being melodramatic, I'm sure - but again, they don't know what I've lost, and they don't know the emptiness in my soul.

I wish I could describe the total meaninglessness of life since February 20 in a way that would make people really get it, but I can't. I'm not that gifted a writer, and I don't know if the words even exist.

So I'll sit here, and die by increments, every minute of every day, until my heart gets the message that I'm done and finally stops beating.