An update

It's been a long time since I've added anything here, mostly because I haven't wanted to. January was a very difficult month for me. February was a little better. I have a good feeling about March.

Since my last posting I have stopped reading grief books, stopped crying on a nightly basis, and have gotten back to what others would call "life as normal". I've also started weekly grief counseling with a therapist and joined a bereavement group with my mom (Grief Share). And last (and pretty much least) I've ordered wedding invitations and hired a photographer.

I've settled much more into my grief and care much less about the wedding, so I expect the tone here will be more about grief in general. I've also really been enjoying my Grief Share workbook, so I'll also probably be sharing some of the exercises from it.

Overall, life hasn't changed much over the last six weeks so there hasn't been much to inspire me. Hopefully through my new programs I'll find more inspiration.

Living with grief

At the end of the week, my Grief Share workbook has a list of suggested topics to write about. Here's one from Week 1:

From the moment you wake up until you crawl into bed at night, what it is like to live with grief?

From the outside, it looks pretty much the same as life did before. I get up, I go to work, I come home, I watch TV, and I go to bed. Internally, though, it's all a little different. I wake up absurdly late and get ready for work in a fog. Most mornings I don't feel like showering. During the week I make a somewhat effort to look nice. On the weekends I simply don't. When I go to work (also absurdly late), I spend the day completely focused on the work around me. I love my work because it keeps me distracted all day long. I take a long lunch and don't care, because it's all about escaping. Then I leave (again absurdly late), go home and heat up whatever leftovers there are from my sister's dinner. I shower, I get in pajamas, and I spend the next several hours watching TV. There's never anything good on, but I watch it anyways, because I don't want to do anything else. Finally when I'm so exhausted that I believe I'll fall asleep as soon as I get in bed, I turn off the TV and go to bed. Then, suprise!, I'm no longer tired. Instead my heads fills with random stuff (work, dad, family, etc.) and I lie away in bed for an hour or two until I can actually sleep. If it was a hard day or if the wrong memory drifts into my mind, I cry. Sometimes I think about how much I miss Dad. Sometimes I think about how certain things wouldn't be happening or would be happening differently if only Dad was around. Sometimes I think about how I cruise through my workday and everything thinks I'm fine, but the reality is that everything is different. So basically, for me, living with grief means a day of distraction, pretending, disappointment, sadness, loneliness, and frustration.