Evidently, two days of sleeping all the time didn't necessarily represent a shift in pattern: I only slept four hours last night: asleep at 3:00 AM, and up at 7:00 AM, and that's WITH melatonin. No dreams, because of course not.
Part of the "work of grief" (my GOD, how I've come to loathe that phrase) involves feeling whatever feeling comes up, and naming it, and leaning into it: really dig in, and explore it, and feel it, and express it however feels right. My expression, as usual, comes from writing; it's imperfect, but it's pretty much all I've got.
I awoke to a beautiful, crisp morning with the sun streaming across the back yard as it always does on sunny mornings in early Spring. Kathleen-Before-and-During-Doug LOVED mornings like this: Kathleen-Before-Doug would have bounced right out of bed, taken care of the early morning necessities, and then gone for a long hike; Kathleen-During-Doug would have enjoyed a few minutes of decadent snuggling in the cool morning air before bouncing out of bed to have her coffee and make Doug's coffee, with a stupid, smug smile plastered on her face because life was SO DAMN GOOD.
Kathleen-After-Doug HATES it.
You know the kind of rage that you can feel physically? The kind that makes you so angry you can practically feel the adrenaline thrumming through your body with such intensity that you're actually trembling? That's how I feel right now. That's how much I resent beautiful mornings like this.
The cherry trees in the front yard are starting to bloom; I want to cut them down. The birds are singing; I want to strangle each and every one of them. I can smell flowers outside when I walk the dog; I want to take RoundUp to every single pretty-smelling plant in sight. I want the world to be as ugly and dead as my hopes, my dreams, my future.
How DARE the world go on as though nothing's changed, when Doug is gone? Yeah, I know: I sound like a Carpenters song. But the rage is very, very real. I resent everything that's beautiful, because my life is anything but. I resent the renewal of life that is Spring, because Doug is dead and nothing will ever be vibrant, or beautiful, or renewed for me. For me, there's no renewal, no enjoyment of the world waking up from its winter slumber. For me, there's just a longer-than-I'd-like slog through the wreckage of what used to be my life. What's beautiful about that? Absolutely nothing.
I hate everything about life now. I especially hate myself, because I hate what I've become: lazy, self-indulgent, self-pitying, desperate to have SOMEONE just take care of me FOR ONE MINUTE, DAMMIT, but knowing I'll never have that again and resenting it. I hate that few people even bother to text or message or call anymore, because they're all preoccupied with their own stress over the pandemic (I don't blame them for that - everyone has plenty reason to be preoccupied - but I hate that at a time when I most NEED people to reach out to me, they don't have the emotional bandwidth to do it). I hate that I'm unable to do anything but the most rudimentary self-care. I hate that I can't even read anything but the simplest of material, and even that is too challenging to track without having to go back and re-read passages over and over again.
I HATE that I still can't work, because my team needs me right now. But they need the Kathleen I was before February 20; the Kathleen I am now is useless to EVERYONE, because she can't even manage to get through rewatching an episode of The Walking Dead without having to rewind at least a few times because she missed something. If I can't keep up with an episode of a TV show that I've already seen before, how the hell could I possibly manage writing queries and doing data analysis? I HATE being useless, but right now that's exactly what I am.
I'm full of rage that Doug is gone. I'm full of rage that I'm having to deal with this horrible, historic disaster without him - without ANYONE, really. I'm full of rage that I'm no longer myself, with no way to know who I'm going to turn into. I'm full of rage that I have family members and friends who have no choice but to put themselves in harm's way just to take care of their own families. I'm REALLY full of rage at the thousands of people who keep on going about their business without regard to the fact that they're putting EVERYONE in danger.
I'm full of so much rage, and I don't know what to do with it. And I don't know what to do with me. The unknown makes me scared and angry under the best of circumstances; just imagine how scared and angry I am given THESE circumstances. And when I feel anger that I can't fully express (like I'm feeling right now - writing, it seems is an inadequate outlet), it turns inward.
Self-loathing and grief are a VERY bad combination, and that's one of the reasons I've resisted every recommendation to ask for a prescription for anti-depressants or anti-anxiety meds or sleeping pills: quite frankly, I'm afraid that having a bottle of sleeping pills in this house would be too risky for me, given my current mental and emotional state. Right now, if I skate too close to the edge, the worst I can really do is get myself drunk - but I'm drinking so little these days that I'd drink myself to sleep long before I could get dangerously drunk. Sleeping pills would be far too convenient to have in those moments when life feels too hard.
I wish I could come up with some elegant way to wrap up this post, but I've got nothing. I'm angry, and I'm scared, and I'm alone, and I'm useless, and I HATE ALL OF IT.
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