No, this is NOT the most wonderful time of the year. No, I will NOT count my blessings, because I have no blessings to count.
What blessings am I supposed to count?
- This house, that I now FUCKING HATE, but can't leave? No, I FUCKING CAN'T leave it, because it needs too much work to put on the market, and that would require letting strangers into my house in the middle of a pandemic. And even without the pandemic, I'm not fit for ANYONE to be around.
- Should I count my job? You know, the job I'm no longer capable of doing?
- Or maybe I should count all the books I have. You know, the ones I'm no longer capable of reading.
- Or maybe I should count my love of theatre that I can no longer do.
- Or football, which I can no longer watch.
- Or all the traveling I can afford to do and planned to do with Doug, but can't because of the pandemic and because traveling was OUR THING AND I DON'T WANT TO FUCKING DO IT ALONE.
- Or maybe I should count all the signs I've gotten that Doug is still with me: FUCKING ZERO.
- Or I should count all my family and friends? The happily married ones who serve as a reminder of what I don't have? The single-but-happy ones who make me feel like shit because I'm not a whole person anymore without my Doug? (Note: they aren't TRYING to make me feel like shit, but it happens anyway.)
- Or should I count my son, whom I've failed over and over again and whom I continue to fail on a daily basis because I'm so unable to function?
- Should I be grateful for the hobbies I can no longer indulge? The food I no longer enjoy?
- Should I be fucking grateful to be trapped in a life that I don't want and cannot fix?
I cannot move forward. I cannot move at all. Up until 2015, my life one long slog through quicksand. And then I met Doug, and for a few brief years, I was truly, genuinely happy and felt loved - something that was missing for those first 50 years. And now I'm right back to slogging through quicksand, only it's far worse now because I've EXPERIENCED a life that was worth living for me and then, suddenly it was gone as magically as Danger Yam insisted Covid would be. And because I have no goals, because everything I wanted to do before is either no longer possible or no longer something I'm capable of doing.
A few minutes ago, I was saddled with a fit of rage so intense that I took one of our tray tables and slammed it to the floor over and over until it splintered. Didn't even make a dent in the rage. NOTHING. DOES.
Affirmations are big in the self-help/therapy/grief support world. Mine: "Tonight, I'll die in my sleep." Clearly, affirmations don't work.
There is no fixing this life of mine. There's no salvaging it. There's just enduring it, and trying to minimize the damage I do to other people in the process.
