But I'm not doing any of those things, because grief makes the decisions now, and grief decided that today would be a Lost Day. What's a Lost Day? I'm so glad you asked. A Lost Day is a day in which I'm not even a shadow of my former self; it's a day in which I have, for all intents and purposes, ceased to exist. It's a day with no accomplishments, no distractions, and no relief.
It went wrong pretty much as soon as I got up this morning: I pulled out my Oculus, and decided I'd try out my space exploration app while drinking my coffee. The good news about the Oculus is that I do not get motion sickness when I use it for gaming. The bad news about the Oculus is that I DO get motion sickness when I use it for anything where I'm staying still, but my avatar is flying around. I was less than three minutes into my tour of the Solar System, and had to turn it off and sit still for 20 minutes, with my eyes closed, breathing deeply just to get the nausea under control.
Once I felt better, I decided to do the Tai Chi app, but the nausea came right back - I don't think the app is the problem; I just think the VR ship has sailed for today.
That set the tone for the day: I tried to read the next two chapters of Just Mercy for my book club, but couldn't focus. Tried to watch a documentary on Netflix; couldn't focus on that, either. Tried to slog through a bit of the Java class I'm taking, but I really should have known better. Even taking a nap proved impossible. Yesterday I was legit excited about and looking forward to playing dress-up (I'm finally, at the age of 55, getting close to managing a passable winged eyeliner), eating some delicious food, and spending time with my friend. Today, I look in the mirror and think, "Why would you even bother, you ratchet old crone? You can dress up all you want, and do flawless makeup, and you're still going to be you, and you still won't have a life, and how pathetic that this is your idea of fun now." And I can't even argue with any of that, because it's all true. Today, I can't think of a single food worth eating. Today, talking to anyone is more work than I'm capable of. It's 6:00 PM, and I cannot tell you what I've done all day, because I've done nothing. I've sat here and stared off into space and done nothing. I haven't watched anything, I haven't read anything, I haven't listened to anything, I haven't gone anywhere. I've written this post. I've fed the animals breakfast and dinner. I took the dog out when he needed it. That's it. It's a Lost Day, and this is what Lost Days look like.
I have far too many Lost Days.
When a Lost Day happens during the work week, I have no choice but to push myself to power through it. But it shows, I'm sure: I'm less able to focus, less productive, certainly less helpful to my colleagues, more emotional, prone to take innocuous statements the wrong way, and prone to lose my temper. Those are the days when I feel like I need to go to sleep the minute I'm done working, even though I never do.
But when a Lost Day happens on the weekend? I'm effectively paralyzed. There is no powering through it, and there's no ignoring it. There's only surviving it, and I STILL wish I could come up with even ONE good reason why surviving it is supposed to be a good thing.
This is part of the reason why I don't generally make plans with people: I never know when grief is going to decide that I need to bail. And since I already feel as though everyone's tired of dealing with this new version of me (because I sure am tired of me), the last thing I want to do is a last-minute cancellation to piss people off even more. So most of the time, I just don't bother.
I miss my friends. I miss sitting down in a restaurant and ordering a meal that someone else has to prepare and someone else has to clean up. I miss going to movies. I miss karaoke. I miss seeing shows. I miss doing shows. I miss my husband. I miss myself. Maybe, someday, I won't have to miss those first six things anymore. The last two, though... I'm going to miss them forever. And I really wish forever would just wrap up already, because I'm tired of ALL of this.
No comments:
Post a Comment