I got a little overwhelmed today. I’ve gotten several freelance jobs this week and almost of them are due tomorrow. However, we’re taking tomorrow off to go to Court Day which meant that I really needed to have the majority of the work due today. They’re not difficult jobs. Landing pages and general website content for one guy, hotel descriptions for another client, and legal articles for another. Things that I typically don’t have any trouble with. These clients usually pay on time, too, and that’s nice with the holidays coming up and everything.
Still, I’ve been moving a little sluggishly lately and I’m not working at 100%. They’ve screwed up Sam and Toby’s medical card (again) and I keep getting bills from doctors’ offices. I need to call and straighten them out but there are so many and the thought of calling them and even just giving them their number and talking to someone freaks me out. I’m not usually like this, but I am getting to be more and more of a procrastinator.
I did cook supper two nights in a row though and both nights we had steak. Tonight we had sirloin wrapped in bacon, mashed potatoes, peas, corn, and pasta. It was a nice meal. Pete was saying that he doesn’t feel as healthy as he should because he hasn’t been eating right and I know that’s true because as cook of the house I have hardly been doing anything lately. And we’re usually used to having nice meals with a variety of things.
Mom and I were also planning Pete’s friends’ arrival and the activities that we will do with them. Pete will be working everyday that they are here and there are two days when he has night class and doesn’t get home until around 9:30 so they will mostly be with me. Karen suggested that we just have some days where we don’t do much, but that gives me even more anxiety. I can’t just stay at home and have people sitting around my house. It drives me insane. We have to be doing something. If we’re just sitting here then I have to entertain them by talking or something and I’m not sure how long I can keep that up. That’s not a grief thing, either. I’ve always had that problem. Whenever Bobby Sue used to come over and spend a week with me, but the time she left we were both exhausted by all the things that we did.
So we’ve been planning activities and meals and such for while they’re here. And then there’s all that cleaning. Karen said that she doesn’t worry about doing a lot of cleaning, but that would make me a nervous wreck. I don’t know if it’s my family or if it’s a southern thing because all my life, whenever company was coming we always stayed up late every night the week before leading up to their arrival, cleaning like we were preparing for the Second Coming. There would be dusting and polishing and vacuuming, and moving things around and buying groceries and flowers…I mean, seriously. Our house would be attacked from top to bottom. I remember being in the 6th grade and staying up til 3 in the morning on a school night dusting off shampoo bottles in the bathroom because my aunt and uncle were coming in.
One time I tried NOT to do that and it made me a nervous wreck. Couldn’t do it.
So yeah, between that and the thought of not getting my work turned in on time and the thought of not getting paid on time (which I really shouldn’t worry about since these clients are usually pretty good) I got overwhelmed. And then I cut myself. Again. Only this time it looks a little nasty. My practical husband asked me to try to at least stay away from my wrist the next time in case the thing slipped and I cut something by accident.
I feel very alone a lot and he thinks it’s because on days that I see him coping better I automatically feel like I am grieving by myself but that’s not true. I don’t think that at all. I know he’s grieving; it’s just that he has a different way of showing it. I feel alone because I don’t feel like I can talk about things with him. I guess that’s normal. We just watched a movie last night called “The Greatest” where the couple had the same issue. I just don’t see a lot of people and the ones I do see don’t seem to be able to communicate that well with me about these things and he’s one of the few people that I feel like he should understand that I should be able to talk to. But I feel really limited. Like when I tried to talk to him the other night about how I was feeling I got a big long lecture about how late it was and how he needed to grade papers and how he “guessed” he could stay up until 3 to talk to me but that would mean that he would have to get up at 6 and that wasn’t much sleep. And another night that I was having a bad night and was upset he kept looking at his watch or looking at the clock on the television, watching how late it was and sighing and talking about how he needed to get up in the morning to go to work. And I don’t want to keep him from work and I don’t want him to be tired all day. That’s just the only time that we see each other anymore.
I felt alone during the pregnancy, too. Pete’s afraid that he’s going to come home and find me dead because I killed myself on purpose or by accident, but I could have hemorrhaged while I was at home, too, when I was pregnant or had a seizure or fallen down the stairs and he didn’t seem to be particularly concerned then. He didn’t keep up with my doctor’s visits, he only went to a couple because it would have meant missing work a little bit, and I felt silly bringing up any times that I felt bad because there were other things to talk about. So I just stopped talking.
Just another thing to brush under the rug, like moving to Nashville.
I slept all day Monday because it was his day off and I didn’t have him to have to be bothered with me or feel like he had to talk to me or take care of me. So I stayed up late Sunday night and then just slept all day Monday. That gave him the chance to get the computer and do stuff.
Sometimes I feel like I have to be my own cheerleader. I sit there and give Pete a laundry list of all the good things I’ve done this week like work and cook supper and done laundry and gotten out twice and played with Sam and he neither confirms nor denies that I have done these things which makes me think that maybe they were pointless to do begin with and just silly. Instead, he just tells me that he’s worried about me.
Karen came in one day and wrote Pete’s name on one wrist and Sam’s on the other. I guess to keep me from slicing them the next time I thought about it. (I don’t think about it, by the way. They’re not carefully executed plans.) Instead, it made me feel worse because every time I looked down at Sam’s wrist I was reminded of what a lousy parent I am being to him and every time I looked at Pete’s I was reminded of how unhelpful I am to him as a partner. But she tried. It was a good idea.
I haven’t been taking my Zoloft regularly and I have to get my Klonopin refilled. I haven’t had it in a couple of days. That would definitely help. I am trying a lot. But it doesn’t always feel like it, especially when I keep getting pushed back down.
It makes me not want to talk about it and just keep things to myself which might be for the better anyway. If I pretend that I’m having a good day and a good time then maybe eventually I will and even if I don’t it will at least make the people around me feel more comfortable.
I’m going to a yardsale and to Court Day tomorrow. I am nervous about all the people and being that far away from home. Even an hour is far away when you have trouble leaving it. But I do want to shop.
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