The current emotion driving me is FEAR. Terror, really. You see, I go back to work on Monday.
I've had 99 days to focus on only my grief. 99 days to journal, and write, and cry any time I need to, and scream any time I need to, and go for a walk any time I need to, and talk to a friend any time I need to. 99 days when I didn't HAVE to do anything I didn't feel up to doing. That all ends on Monday morning at 7:00 AM, when I have to become a functioning, productive member of society again.
I don't know if I can do that. Hence the fear.
I work with a wonderful group of people, and I know that they have zero expectations for me in terms of productivity right now. I also know that that largesse will not last forever; it can't. And what if I never get my skills and knowledge and personality back? Who wants to work with someone who's an incompetent downer virtually all the time? No one, that's who.
Less urgent, but ever present, is another, far bigger fear: going back to work takes me out of the stopped-time space in which I've been living. It forces me out of my bubble of grief for eight hours a day. And - to me - that feels like a line that's being drawn between life as Doug's wife and my uncertain and unwanted future. As of Monday, I have to step over that line and into that future.
And I don't want to do that.
I want to go back to the life I had and loved, not forward into this life that has nothing good to offer me. I want to be Doug's wife again. I want to be loved again. I want to go back to knowing that if I have a bad day at work, it's no big deal because I'll have the evening with my love.
But I won't have evenings with my love, and I can't go back, and I can't stay in my bubble. As of Monday, I'll have to work. And that's all I'll have. No socializing, no theatre, no anything resembling a life. Just terrifying work, and a terrifying future that I don't want.
I don't want this. I don't want any of this.
I want my life back.
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