We talked about my anxiety and my desire for control, and my fear of... well, everything. She has no answers, and that's frustrating (even though I know, rationally, that no one has the answers). We talked about my concerns about going back to work, which are very specific and very difficult to address:
- I'm afraid I will screw up something big and provide bad data at a time when trustworthy data is critical. This is not an unfounded fear, given how little cognitive capacity I have.
- I'm afraid that, even if I don't screw up something big, that my skills in general will be SO far below the high bar I've set over the years that I won't be even remotely good at my job. And that's the one area of my life at which I've always been competent - if I lose that too, what's left of me?
- I'm afraid that I'll be in a meeting and someone will say something that triggers an inappropriate response that I won't be able to control since I have no filter.
And the scariest thing of all is that I won't know which if any of those fears is valid until I actually try to go back to work - and that means there's not really much margin for error there.
Then there's the fear of who I am. Or who I will be. If you've been paying attention, you know that I didn't really like myself for a pretty big chunk of my life. But I liked who I was with Doug; I LOVED who I was: I was calmer, kinder, happy, content, less selfish. That was because I had Doug. But I don't have him anymore, and so there's no going back to being that version of me.
I'm terrified that I'm going to stay the version of me that I am right now: angry, lonely, sad, bitter... and that's a very reasonable concern. I can't leave my house, because where can I go? I have nothing to hope for, because it's not just my life that's been turned upside down; everyone's lives have been turned upside down.
I'm terrified that I'll turn into a stereotypical widow who spends the rest of her time miserable and living vicariously through her friends and family who still have lives, yelling "it should've been me!" every time someone dies and never letting anyone have a moment's happiness without reminding the world of how I got screwed out of being with the love of my life.
I'm terrified that I'll do a 180 and become someone completely unrecognizable: buy a motorcycle, get tattooed from head to toe, dye my hair purple, and generally start behaving like someone less than half my age.
I don't know who I am or who I'm going to be, and that's terrifying. Because who I WANTED to be and who I finally became, is no longer an option.
And then, there's the big milestone that's coming at me at like a runaway train: Doug's birthday is Saturday. It was supposed to be his first birthday as my husband, and I won't ever get to share that with him. I won't get to celebrate a single birthday with him as his wife. Because I'm not his wife anymore; I have no husband anymore. All I have are memories and the longing to create memories we'll never get to make.
If not for COVID-19, I'd probably have some friends and family come over, cook dinner, tell stories, and honor Doug that way. But I can't do that. I can't do anything. And would that help anyway? Probably not. I'm scared of how bad that day is going to be for me: it's another 24-hour period, but it's a big day. And I've been robbed not only of my husband, but of my entire support system and of the rituals that might provide comfort.
I'm stuck, and I can't think of a way to get unstuck.
Brooke suggested that this is progress in that I'm thinking about the future. But here's the thing: I still don't want to be here. I still want to close my eyes and never open them again; that hasn't changed. But since that's clearly not happening, then what?
I've mentioned that I'm rewatching The Walking Dead. I'd forgotten about the whole "Andrea wants to kill herself after her sister dies" subplot. At one point, Daryl says to Andrea, "Do you want to live now?" and she replies, "I don't know if I want to, or if I have to, or if it's just a habit."
That pretty much sums up where I am. I don't want to be here, but I am. I know I sure as hell don't want to live like this. But this is where I'm stuck. And without a roadmap to get unstuck (and I know - there IS no roadmap), I'm terrified that I'll be stuck here forever.
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