The unbearable darkness of grieving

Another day, another few gallons of tears

Today was a bad day. I mean, they're all bad days, but today was particularly rough. Putting this blog together provided a good distraction for a while, but I'm learning that distractions just lead to even more intense grief later.

Tomorrow will be three weeks since Doug died. Next Tuesday will be one month since his surgery, five months since our wedding, AND St Patrick's Day - which was a big deal for us. This next week is going to be full of minefields, is what I'm saying.

We're all gonna die!

I'm dreading the upcoming days, as much as I dread just about every day. I'm watching the mass insanity about COVID-19, and it's as though I'm viewing it all through this gauzy filter: you see, I don't particularly care if I die (not the same thing as being suicidal, I promise), so I'm kind of removed from it all.

The irony, of course, is that - even though I don't particularly want to live - I'm doing exactly what I should be doing to protect myself: I'm not back to work yet (and I can't go back any time soon; my emotions are still too unpredictable for me to handle meetings, and my GIS is so out of control that coding is a virtual impossibility. Even if I were back to work, I work from home. So I'm home alone most of the time. If I need food or supplies, I use InstaCart (yes, I'm that bougie).

Among my closest friends and family, it's become something of a dark joke that I want to die. And really, it could make for a hilarious comedic play: a woman loses the love of her life, and wants nothing more than to go with him. A tornado hits her town - within just a few streets of her house; but she survives unscathed. A pandemic that's killing people all over the world strikes; she doesn't catch it. I could probably try to provoke someone into killing me, but I'd start crying and tell the whole story and the dude would hug me instead.

Yeah, I realize that laughing about my desire to leave this plan of existence is weird. What can I tell you? In my family, we were raised to believe that we can and should laugh at anything. So I do. Consider it one of my coping mechanisms.

Call me Lili Von Shtupp

I am SO FUCKING TIRED. I'm tired of talking, I'm tired of crying, I'm tired of trying to gather enough energy to clean the house. It's not just physical exhaustion (although there's plenty of that; I'm only sleeping four or five hours a night); it's just overall existential exhaustion.

My whole life has been turned upside down; everything I knew about myself and my life no longer applies. Do you have any idea what it's like to have an existential crisis when you have ZERO cognitive or emotional capacity and you're 54 years old and you can't think of ONE good reason to live? It's scary AF. And nothing helps. The days both fly by and take forever; I have no sense of time. It's as though I'm living in this surreal bubble where there's no time, and where nothing matters. Mostly because nothing DOES matter right now. The only thing I think about, really, is how much I miss Doug and how much I wish I could be with him.

That's all I've got for tonight.