February 24, 2016

Grieving

I will admit that when my father died, I was the only one who didn't break into torrents of hysterical tears.  I still haven't, though there have been times I've gone misty-eyed and sad.  I was the stoic one who kept an even keel while the arrangements were made, while we got through the holidays, while we helped our mother tie up things with dad's estate.  His remains were sent to me to hold onto to while my mom decided what to finally do with them.  So I've been the literal (figurative?  I always get them confused) rock in all of this...though I've pretty much written off ever enjoying my birthday ever again, at least for the foreseeable future, because now there's too much sadness linked to it.

I find that my grief has been manifesting in other ways.

I withdrew from life quite a bit.  Haven't been talking to anyone I didn't need to.  Slept a lot.  Lost motivation to do lots of things I used to enjoy.  Gained back 10 of the pounds that I lost (though I'm still down about 15 lbs from my starting point so that wasn't too horrible) because I wasn't exercising anymore.  Felt lost, alone, abandoned.   Didn't write here or anywhere for that matter.  Was sketchy in my moderating appearances at the nursing forum.  Threw myself into work because it was the one thing I HAD to do.  In fact, work was a welcome distraction because for most of the shift, I could focus on what I had to do.

At least I didn't drink myself into oblivion or use other forms of self-medication.  My bottle of alprazolam still has a layer of dust on it, its last use being on the flight back here.

The funny thing is, I didn't realize that I was grieving until someone at work asked me how things were going since the death.  She had recently lost a parent too, though her loss was completely unexpected, whereas we knew my dad was going to die on a specific date or the next day.  When answering her, I thought about how I was handling things...and realized all of the previous paragraph.      And when another coworker talked about some of the things he was going through after the loss of his parent, I realized what he was saying sounded a lot like what I was feeling.

*sigh*

I'd love to be able to say that in realizing what I was feeling, that I was miraculously able to overcome it in the course of a couple of days and be back to my normal, chipper self.   And we all know that life isn't THAT easy.

So I continue to chug along, though now I'm making an effort to get motivated to do things.  It hasn't been easy, and I'm taking it a small step at time.