Here’s an update on the last few days. I want out of this
but when I look online and research the subjects of delayed grief and
complicated grief there is no quantification. Be gentle with yourself, it will
take as long as it takes, is the kind of advice from the counselling side.
While from grievers themselves: it can keep coming back, it never goes away. I
guess my wish and the wishes of others in my position is what led to all the
nonsense about the stages of grief. But I guess the question to ask is, how
long can the brain take to rewire itself? And can I force the issue? Fuck this ‘it
takes as long as it takes’ and fuck this ‘be gentle with yourself’. This is
giving up, opting out, saying don’t expect too much of me henceforth because I
am a victim. In a similar respect I’m getting a little … tired of the
meditation-speak. All this ‘let things be as they are’ accept and observe the
thoughts passing through your brain, relax, do nothing.
Fuck off.
Jan 30th
I guess one of my problems is that I always viewed emotional
displays as self-indulgent. Often, when I would see someone miserable, I would
feel that they are 'reveling in their misery'. They would be putting on an
attention-seeking display. It's not just my attitude it is also a British
attitude. You hear a Sergeant Major's voice, 'Smarten up there, don't be such a
wimp, man.' It's different in other cultures where there is a lot of wailing
and breast beating, and maybe they've got that right. If you don't let it out
you don't heal.
Feeling a bit better today. I've written all I can about the
death. Maybe I'll write more as it occurs to me but certainly not 2,000 words a
day. The pictures still fuck me up but I'm getting longer periods of calm. I
guess if I have any advice for anyone who is going through or who has gone
through the same thing it is: don't do what I did. Don't run away. I did it by
exercising to exhaustion and just shutting down my mind, for two years. Don't
run away into a bottle. Don't run away into a packet of pills. In fact I have
gone completely about face. My advice is 'revel in your misery', because you
need to and you have to.
Jan 31st
Again today I am ‘processing my grief’ I am ‘dealing with my
issues’. Basically looking at photographs and thinking. Whatever. I’m finding
that now I’ve opened the box I get periods when I want to close it again. I’ll
look at the pictures and find my eye straying away from Caroline or I want to
stop thinking about the attached memories. I sometimes find myself trying to transfer
the feelings and in that way escape their true source. But I force myself to
look at Caroline and remember, and all the shit feelings are right back where
they should be. A further result of this is, as I think I mentioned before, the
grief, in the right place, is now hitting me outside of looking at the photos
or writing about this.
Today I’m going to have dinner with Caroline’s parents. I
wonder, now I’ve opened things up, how that will feel? I’ve eaten there before many
times since her death but of course was practising avoidance. Now I will see
the empty place at the table, the photographs there, the empty living room
chair … all of it.
Later…
It has been a week now with the photographs. I will continue
this, but I feel I need push myself back into my life. I know this sort of
thing should have no time-table, but life must continue too. I have left jobs
half-done, I really need to get the vacuum cleaner out and, since someone just
collected my old freezer, I seriously need to clean the kitchen floor. And
finally, and most importantly, I need to find out if there has been any mental
change in my attitude to writing. Tomorrow I will sit down and read through the
book I started writing back on Crete and, thereafter, I will see how it goes.
Later still…
First time I've REALLY talked with Caroline's parents about
her death since she died. It was very hard sometimes, and it was also a relief.
They did not know about the perpetual vomiting. I did not know that she asked
her mother to hold her about an hour before she died. Went to pieces when I
heard that. But it all has to come out: talked out, cried out, written out.
Feb 1st
I always look for answers to things and try to apply logic.
This delayed grief or 'complicated grief', upon reading all the symptoms,
seemed like the answer. It seemed like this was my problem. But I also like
proof, empirical evidence of any theory. When I started looking at photographs
and writing about Caroline my depression left me and my anxiety dropped away.
The negative voice in my mind got quieter. Things that made me paranoid and a
bit crazy lost their charge as my fucked up emotions returned to their real
source. That's empirical evidence.
However, I was disappointed to still be waking up and having
panic attacks if I stayed in bed too long. I noted that the more I thought
about Caroline the less power they had, but they were still there. Now, this
morning, after over a week of grieving and then after a kind of watershed in
really talking to her parents about her death yesterday, I've woken up feeling
okay. No panic attacks this morning. Now it is a case that I don't 'think' I'm
on the right path, I know it.
Feb 2nd
I was very happy about the change in me after talking about
Caroline to her parents, and the morning of the day after I was pretty good.
However, I then found some old pictures of our first year together, and they
hit me like a pile driver. Panic attacks back this morning and a general
feeling of misery when I was first out of bed. However, I sat and thought for a
while and realised that of course I shouldn’t expect an even and steady climb
in mood, or a steady improvement in my state of mind. Inevitably there will be
ups and downs. Yes, I was miserable, but that’s grieving, it’s not all about
tears. And though I was miserable I wasn’t depressed and incapable and again I
did not feel anxious. I pushed myself and got on with some jobs I had neglected
and now feel myself coming back up.
One further note: I didn’t have much time yesterday to get
on with some writing, just a few hours. Most of that time I spent reading what
I had written before, but I did also manage 300 words of fiction. It’s not a
lot for me, but it’s one of those positives I should process!
Comment…
I spoke to a counsellor at Cruse Bereavement Care today.
She'd heard it all before. People stop grieving and shut down on everything
because it it hurts too much. But then the grief comes back and bites them.
Depression and anxiety are the top signs, along with lack of interest in
things, distrust of people, expectation that life will be shit,
purposelessness, moments when you feel like you're going crazy because you
can't shut down the negativity in your mind, oh, and panic attacks for good
measure. Time to go and look at some more photos...
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