Grief Counseling session 3, and how to support the grieving widow

Grief counseling is weird, yo. I'm sure it's weird for everyone, but for a lifelong overthinker with self-esteem issues and a deep-seated belief that she's unlovable, and who is task and deadline-driven, it's REALLY weird.

My poor counselor (we're calling her Grace, because... I dunno, something about confidentiality) is trying SO HARD to convince me that I'm going to feel better, and get better, eventually. And I know she really believes that I will. But I don't.

I told her about my fear that I'm going to be stuck like this forever (well, I've told her about ALL my fears, and frankly, I'd be surprised if she doesn't go through a fifth of bourbon every time I leave her office), and she said that won't happen. She's been working in this field for over 20 years, and the people who get stuck are the ones who "don't do the work." The work being feeling the grief, expressing the grief, expressing all the other feelings, etc. It's her professional opinion that my willingness and ability to express my grief so clearly, and my sense of humor, are signs that I'm stronger than I think, and a survivor. Evidently, the fact that I don't want to survive doesn't factor into the calculation. Yay.

Clearly, I'm not having any issues feeling the grief. I feel it all the time. It's my constant and unwelcome companion. I express it every day - here, in my paper journal, screaming in my empty house... But it makes no difference. It doesn't help.

Grace gave me a handout today about the "typical" grief trajectory. The first six weeks are typically a time of shock and numbness, with lots of family support. Well, two out of three ain't bad, as Meat Loaf sang: Numbness? That's a riot. I'd LOVE to feel numb. I'd love to feel anything but this unrelenting sadness and loneliness and fear and ache of missing my other (and better, to be honest) half.

At some point between those first six weeks and the end of the first year, the support drops off, everyone else gets back to their normal lives, and that's when (the non-grieving friends and family) tend to start saying things like, "isn't it time you stopped feeling sorry for yourself?" and "really, you need to move on."

Fair warning: those are words that no one EVER needs to say to me unless they want to be cut out of my life permanently, and I'm not joking even a little bit. I will miss Doug until the day I die (which, ideally, will be tonight in my sleep). There is no moving on. There will be no time when I won't feel as though a precious gift has been stolen from me, and yeah - I'm going to feel sorry for myself about that, no matter what else good may eventually happen. I lost Doug, and Doug lost me, and that's sad. It will NEVER not be sad.

So, yeah. The whole "friends and family moving on and leaving me more alone than I already feel" is a big fear of mine, and I'm not helping myself there, because I'm pushing people away (sometimes passive-aggressively, and sometimes actively).

Grace suggested that I need to dig deep, put aside my fear (of being a burden or being no fun or bringing people down) and just tell you all how to help me, if you want to help me. So, let's do this.

How am I doing, right now? And what can you expect from me?

I'm devastated. I'm broken, possibly beyond repair. I've lost the person I'd planned to spend the rest of my life with. I don't know who I am anymore - the old Kathleen doesn't exist anymore, and this new Kathleen is horrible: sad, depressed, lonely, anxious, scared, bitter, did I mention lonely and scared? I HATE her, so I expect that you will, too.

I want to die. I've been pretty clear on that. I am not, however, suicidal. I know it's difficult to hear me talk about wanting to die, but I'ma need you to keep that your problem. I hate that I have nothing to give (emotionally or otherwise) to anyone right now, but I don't. And I don't know when that will change. And I hate being selfish, or even having anyone think I'm being selfish, but I can't help it. I've got nothing to give. And I certainly can't worry about making you feel better about how bad I feel. If it's too painful to hear me talking about my desire to die and be with Doug, I have a great therapist I can recommend, but you aren't allowed to complain to me about it.

My emotions are on a hair trigger, and they often make no sense. I may go from "ok" to hysterical tears or white-hot rage in a matter of seconds for any reason or no reason. Every emotion is intense beyond what I ever could have imagined. There's no way to know what will trigger an emotional bomb, and there's no way for me to control it. And this will probably last for some time. Please try to understand and be forgiving.

I'm going to repeat myself. A lot. Evidently this is completely normal (and my mother lied when she said I was special). Please be patient and pretend you haven't heard that story 25 times already.

How can you help?

Well, you can't. As I wrote this morning, and as I told Missy this morning and Grace this afternoon: if you take the entirety of what I've written since Thursday, February 20 and distill it down to its essence, my problem is that I'm alive and Doug is not. There are only two solutions to that problem, one of which is impossible and the other of which I can't act on (but you can still come to me in my sleep and take me with you, baby - could you hurry up and do that?). Grace, of course, sees that as a false binary, but I do not. This too is apparently normal.

So the first thing you can do is accept that you cannot help. You cannot make it better. You cannot make me feel better.

If you can't actually help, then what can you do?

You can be here for me (well, not physically, right now - ZOOM video calls, maybe?). You can make sure that I know you love me. You can listen to me. You can cry with me. You can shout at the Fates with me. You can hug me while I cry my eyes out and shout at the Fates.

You can reach out to me, and keep reaching out to me, even when I'm not particularly receptive (especially then, actually, because I tend to push people away when I most need them). You can make plans to go out and do stuff with me (again, once SARS-CoV-2 decides to fade into the background and we're allowed to go out and do stuff). You can understand that sometimes, I may make plans and then change my mind at the last minute if I really don't think I can handle it - please understand when that happens.

You can encourage me to try new activities. Right now, theatre is absolutely not on the table, because the thought of being on stage without Doug either beside me or in the audience is unbearable. All the things I used to do with Doug seem unbearable. So I need to find some new hobbies, at least in the short term.

You can make the first move, because odds are that I won't: left to my own devices, I'll stay here in my house alone and grieve forever just like I'm doing right now. And if I'm going to be stuck on this shit hole plane of existence, I'm going to have to start rejoining the living at some point, a little bit at a time. But I probably won't do that without some gentle pushes. And even if I say no the first time (or two, or 10), please keep asking. I need that.

You can talk to me. You can comment on my blog and on Facebook. Several people have said that they read everything I write but don't comment out of fear of upsetting me. 

I love you for being worried that you'll make me cry. But here's the thing: I'm going to cry. And it doesn't mean you said anything out of line (if you do, I promise to try and gently tell you so). It just means that I'm sad, and everything reminds me of Doug and of everything that we've lost. 

But I internalize your silence as rejection, so PLEASE talk to me. 

Talk to me about what's going on with you, talk to me about Doug, talk to me about your problems (yeah, I know you have problems too, and focusing on something other than my grief now and then is a nice break from the exhausting work of grieving). Even if I told you to write me off because I'm too broken, please don't. I didn't mean it. I said it as a pre-emptive strike because if I reject you first, then you can't reject me. (Did I mention I have issues?)

If you've experienced a similar loss, please talk to me about it. And if you cry, or if I cry, that's okay. And no, "similar loss" does not mean your cat, or your parent, or your sibling, or your best friend. I've experienced all those losses, and while they were all devastating in their own way, losing one's life partner is EXPONENTIALLY worse than all of them combined. I'm not saying that you didn't grieve those losses, or that they weren't important, or that you weren't devastated by them; I'm saying they are not equivalent. They aren't even close. Losing a beloved spouse is in a league entirely of its own.

What should you not do?

• Please don't tell me that you know how I feel, because you don't. Not even if you lost your spouse. Not even if you lost your spouse of exactly four months and three days. Not even if you lost that spouse three days after he had the exact same surgery that Doug did. Because your spouse wasn't Doug, and you aren't me. I understand you want to express empathy for my suffering, but you don't and cannot know how I feel. No one ever can; that's what makes it so miraculous when people can love each other, because they do so despite never really being able to know how each other feels.
• Please don't be afraid to talk about Doug, or about anything else.
• Please don't tell me that I need to take anti-depressants or anti-anxiety meds or sleeping pills, take a road trip, eat more, go to the gym, get back to work... basically, don't tell me what I need to do. I have a pretty good sense of what I need (much of the time), and I've got a grief counselor and a therapist who will not be shy about telling me if I'm going too far off track.
• Please don't expect that at some point I'll just be better. I wish I could say it works that way, but it doesn't. Grief is the Jeremy Bearimy of emotions: it's not linear; it loops back on itself, and emotions somehow manage to happen... before the emotion that came first. Side note: Seriously, people, if you haven't watched The Good Place, you need to: grieving or not, it's a fantastic forking show. In fact, the most beautiful thing anyone has said to me since Doug died was a total stranger in a Good Place Facebook group, who said, "Someday, you'll meet him in the dot over the I". Watch it, for me. You'll be glad you did.
• Please don't give up on me. I'm not going to be easy to be around for a while. Sometimes, I'm going to be downright difficult to be around. I'm going to cry, and it's going to make you uncomfortable. But please don't give up on me, because I need you.