Day 37

i still can't concentrate. i'm sitting here, trying to read short 15 pages and i just can't. mid-sentence my mind is on other things. it's frustrating. it's frustrating that my husband can't give me a hug and tell me everything will be ok. writing that last line has made my hands start shaking. the physical symptoms of this overwhelming grief are very real. next week i'm going to try out a grief support group for young widows. i don't know what to expect and i don't know if it will be helpful, but i'm going to try. i feel like nothing will help, because the only thing that will help is having my husband back and i don't have that option. my mom attended a grief group after my brother passed away and she said she found it very helpful, so i'll try. i feel like i'm hitting the point where people have moved on. my grief is no longer their primary concern, and while i know, rationally, that my grief is not anyone else's responsibility, it feels scary to be entering a time where i feel like i have to go it alone. that's not to say my friends aren't still being supportive. they are. but if i have 3 breakdowns a day, i can't expect everyone i know to set aside the happenings in their own lives to comfort me every couple of hours. in a lot of ways, i feel like i didn't need people as much when they were 100% available. looking back, it is like i was enveloped in a cloud of shock, that kept me from feeling the depth of this loss. there were logistics to take care of, a cremation, a memorial service, etc. People were always around, offering help, and I was a zombie. I felt out of my own skin. It is like I didn't even experience those days. I look back on them as if they're some movie I saw and not an experience I experienced. DOn't misunderstand me; they were very real moments of incredulous pain during that period. Before he was cremated, I went to see Robert's body twice. I took pictures, I held his hand, I stroked his cheek, I kissed him dozens and dozens of times. As different as everything felt, his lips felt the same. They were the same soft lips I'd spent 6 and a half years kissing. I'm sure that sounds terrible to some people. Kissing my dead husband, but how could I not? I was facing a lifetime without him. I told him I loved him, I begged him to come back, I gave him things that I thought were important for him to take with him on his journey. I brought Bodhi to see him, hoping somehow she would recognize his scent and recognize that he had passed away, so she would understand that her papa wasn't coming back. I don't know if it worked. Those moments were terrible. But they were islands of pain in oceans of numbness. I spent the first week after he passed camped out in my mom's king sized bed, watching tv, checking the internet, and rarely moving. I didn't want to eat, I couldn't sleep without a cocktail of medication, and even then, it was hit or miss. I'm still taking that cocktail of medication to rest at night. Without it, my mind won't shut off. It doesn't matter how tired I am, my brain will just start running and not allow me to rest. Rest is almost not important, though, since regardless of whether I get a lot or a little, in broken chunks or hours-long stretches, I am exhausted.