Sunday, July 22, 2012

Cloudy with a Chance of Tears


The weather in Griefland lately has been mostly gray skies.  I don’t want to do anything. I prefer to curl up on the couch and bide my time until it’s time for bed. This is similar to the strategy I used in the early weeks after A died. Just get through this day.

Isolation is most appealing to me and I prefer to hide out in my house than spend time with anyone other than my husband. Poor guy, he tries to encourage me to at least come outside and enjoy the summer sunshine. But I just want to burrow inside.

And the crying. I am so weepy lately. Any little thing sets it off, but mostly it is the onslaught of thoughts and memories of A. For some reason, my brain keeps replaying the events surrounding A’s birth over and over and over again.

This weather pattern has been holding steady over Griefland for weeks now. What does it mean? Am I depressed? Is this normal grieving? Should I do something?

I attended support group a week or two ago for the first time in months. It wasn’t very helpful to me because there was a couple present who had just experienced a first trimester loss days earlier. All of the focus was on them – rightfully so. But I left feeling unfulfilled and a little disappointed that group wasn’t the magic pill to alleviate my symptoms.

I’ve also started back up regular individual counseling sessions. We’ll see how that goes.

In the meantime, I try not to judge my actions. I try to do what’s best for me, but is hibernating in mid-summer really best?

8 comments:

  1. There is just no particular way to manage grief, I am one for isolation as well but that will eventually get better. I still spend more at home than I used too. Just getting through each day is a good objective.xo

    ReplyDelete
  2. I hibernate too. Interacting with anyone other than my husband takes so much energy and doesn't make me feel any better. When I am at work or having normal conversation with others, I feel that they get this false sense that I am doing great and this makes me feel like the world understands me even less.
    I also have questioned whether I am depressed, and have talked about it with my counselor. But the thing is, I am depressed--my baby died. I haven't wanted meds, mostly because I don't want to feel falsely positive. There are many good things in my life, but life is really hard right now and has been for a long time and that is so draining. My counselor hasn't pushed meds or anything else as long as I am sleeping, eating, going to work, etc. and functioning relatively normally, which I am.

    Summer hasn't really helped me because half the time it is too hot and humid to spend time outside, which has been frustrating. I don't mind not interacting with others, but being inside when it looks like it should be so nice out does make me feel worse. I'm right there with you, trying to keep a look out for the breaks in the gray!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Julie - This comment is so validating for me. Knowing that you feel similarly and find isolation to be most comfortable is very supportive. It's like the pre-stillbirth part of my brain knows that this is "unhealthy" "abnormal" behavior. That plays into my already shattered self-confidence and I start to doubt myself and what feels right.

      You've also articulated something I've been fumbling with for months, "...makes me feel like the world understands me even less." YES! I struggle to converse and interact with people outside the babyloss community. I am constantly trying to explain myself, justify my feelings, offer a counter emotion so they don't think I'm doing better than I am or so they don't think I'm suicidal for that matter. It's exhausting!

      I agree on passing up the meds (at least for now). Depression is warranted given that our boys died unexpectedly. Plus it's technically a stage of grief, if I don't go through it now, surely I'll pay for it down the road. As long as I'm taking care of myself and Dragon, as long as I'm minimally functioning in the world by going to work and showering (occasionally), then I'm not too worried. Just have to ride it out.

      Delete
  3. Hibernate if you need to. It is a terrible grey and rainy day here, perfect for hibernating. But I know what you mean. It feels all wrong, sometimes, to be this sad in the summer and sometimes I am filled with this enormous resentment that I have to lose all of this time to grief, not just to have my beautiful girl die, but to lose days and weeks and months to this awful sadness. I know we need to do it - and really, I welcome the sadness so much of the time, because it is all I have to connect to her - but it is all - ALL OF IT - so profoundly unfair. Love to you...wish I could bring you a cup of tea and sit with you through a bit of this...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you Friend. Sometimes you need to hear that permission from someone else. I will hibernate a little less guiltily now.

      Sharing back and forth online is a decent substitute for in-person tea. It means so much to me to have you and other BLM's to talk to and vent to. No one else gets how bipolar this whole experience is.

      Delete
  4. Do and feel whatever you need to, hibernate if that's what you need to do. I know that i'd be hibernating even if it weren't necessary. I'd be muddling through my workdays anxious to go home where i feel safe and where I can just be. I'm so glad you have E and that I have J. Thinking of you and A and the little one you're growing. xx

    ReplyDelete
  5. I'm a big advocate of just being in the grief and giving it some space to do what it's there to do. I've followed different conversations about the difference between grief and depression because when I looked at the clinical definition of depression, I laughed at how clearly it described my experience of grief. My therapist and I made the agreeement that as long as I got out of bed and got dressed I wasn't depressed, I was just greiving. I could sit on the couch all day long and look out the window and drink tea and call it greiving. And there were many weeks that I did just that. Breathe and be gentle with yourself. xoxo

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you for your supportive words Suzanne. I do just want to sit on the couch, look out the window and drink tea all day. I'm running low on patience for this overbearing grief. It's been 9 months, I thought it'd be a little easier by now. Sure it isn't as suffocating as the early weeks, but it isn't significantly better. I just hate feeling like this, you know? Of course you do.

      Sending you extra love and warmth on today, Nathaniel's first birthday. He's awesome.

      Delete