A little overwhlemed

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.

Lonely

Grief is a solitary confinement.

The days are going by more quickly now which is both a blessing and a curse. Toby has now been dead longer than he was actually alive. That always happens at some point, but for most people the act takes longer. It’s unfortunate that his death was able to outlive his live in a matter of weeks and not years.

I am finding that grief like a solitary confinement. Even those around you who are almost certainly going through the exact same thing can’t ever really understand what you are feeling or thinking. Everyone has different ways of processing it and dealing with it and although this is normal, and even natural, it still makes it a little lonely.

I’ve said it before and it continues to be true: I have to change the way that I act around people. Maybe people feel like they have to change the way that they act around me, but I feel the same way. I feel much more guarded about what I say because I never know how it’s going to be taken. I guess that’s what I get for being friends with a bunch of counseling/psychology/social work people. Sometimes it’s hard to turn off the job at the end of the day. I know it was for me when I worked in that profession.

I am trying to learn ways to cope with things on my own. I’ve stopped talking to certain people because they are uncomfortable with the things that we are going through and pretending to be happy and doing well in front of them is just too exhausting. Pete’s granddad (whom I actually think a lot of) asked if we were “getting over our mishaps.” He doesn’t want to hear about how we’re REALLY doing and I find it too exhausting to put up a good front.

Many of my friends I haven’t seen since the visitation or funeral. Some I haven’t seen since before then. I don’t know if they’re staying away because they don’t know what to say or do, because they’re nervous about what they might say or do, because they assume that we have lots of people around us and they might be in the way, or because we simply aren’t on their radar. It reminds me a lot of my pregnancy.

When Toby first died my doctor gave me some valium and told me to schedule a counseling session in a couple of weeks. She very wisely said that after a week or so people would stop coming around that that’s when I would need it the most. She was right.

I have found a friend (oddly enough, one I haven’t seen since high school) that also lost a child the same way and we communicate every day by e-mail. That has been very helpful but I don’t want to lean on her too hard or else I might bring back painful memories for her that she doesn’t want to relive. Kind of like wearing out your welcome.

Another friend offered to take me to a support group meeting and we went (as you might have read about in a previous entry) but when I asked her if she could go to one with me and Pete that deals in infant grief she said that it would make her feel “intrusive” and then I felt embarrassed having asked her in the first place. But I guess I should have known people.

People say, “Let me know if you need anything” but I’m never sure if they’re just saying it to be polite or if they actually mean it. And what’s too much to ask of someone? And what do I really need to begin with?

I get long e-mails and chat sessions from friends apologizing for not coming over and telling me about their health issues and money issues and such but listening to them is sometimes like watching something on television. It doesn’t feel real, or like it has anything to do with me. I don’t want to use the phrase “hollow excuses” but that’s what pops into my mind from time to time. I have friends who are more interested in telling me about their woes and their experiences with panic attacks and suicidal thoughts than actually trying to get together with me and talking to me. They seem to talk “at” me and to “to” me, if that makes any sense. I have other friends (well, some of them are the same friends) that are more interested in looking up statistics on SIDS and writing me about different things that they have found that might be helpful to me, as though I am incapable of a simple Google search, then making a point of seeing me. Maybe they think they’re helping that way. Maybe for them, that’s the best they can offer. At least when Heather found the group last week she offered to go with me and that was incredibly kind of her.


It’s even hard for us to relate to each other in our own house. Pete got angry at me back in August when I suggested that we do something to celebrate our wedding anniversary because it was so close to Toby’s death, and while I understood that celebrating might not be the best idea at the time, I still wanted to honor the fact that we had been married for 3 years.

I sit here by myself all day and sometimes when he comes home I follow him around like a little puppy dog. In fact, sometimes I feel like a puppy dog, waiting my turn to be fed or taken out or given attention to. It’s like I’m trying to be obedient and helpful and not cause anyone any extra trouble but sometimes I can’t help it. I can’t lay all of my feelings on him and really talk to him because he has tests to grade for work and papers to look at and his own book that he is writing on and he has to try to find time to fit all of that into his schedule and that’s usually at night after Sam goes to bed. Or he has to fit in his runs when he has extra time during the day and he doesn’t get a lot of free time.

When I told him once that I was having suicidal thoughts he immediately suggested a psychiatrist or even me being admitted to a hospital since he and Mom can’t be here all day to keep their eye on me. I feel like such a bother for everyone. I can’t even do my fair share of taking care of Sam. I tried to today, though. We did pumpkins together and decorated a lot for Halloween. And yesterday we went to a fall festival and took a hayride to pick things out and that was a lot of fun. I’m not taking as much medication as I was, mostly because I’m afraid I’ll accidentally take too much, but I know that I need it because the anxiety doesn’t seem to be getting much better.

I’m going to give that infant support group a try and now that I am working on one big freelance project instead of several little ones I should be able to take more time off. Then maybe I can get to some counseling sessions. I feel like I’m just causing extra stress on everybody else in my family so I need to try to get better as soon as I can so that I can start picking up my slack again. Pete is too busy to take care of me and Sam both and with Mom having her stroke she doesn’t need to be doing so much, either. I’m the weakest link here and I’m the one that needs to improve.

But I guess it’s something that I’m going to have to try to figure out on my own. I’ll do it eventually, but it’s really hard sometimes. And lonely.