Grief and Avoidance

Avoidance is not working so well for me anymore. It seems like the more I try to stuff my feelings down inside of me, the worse things are becoming for me. I become more fatigued, more short-tempered, and I see a definite reduction in joy. My sleep is plagued with dreams, sometimes about mom, sometimes about other stuff which I can’t remember. But always the dreams are intense and I wake up with a pounding heart which takes a couple of hours to get back into a normal heart rate.

I think I have avoided everything about mom’s death, ever since it happened. I went into robotic mode just days before she died, in order to take care of the business of preparing for a death. I was stone cold at the funeral home talking to the mortician and picking out a casket. I put on an overly cheerful persona at the funeral services and funeral. Even as I was behaving in a perky manner, I knew I was being crazy, my reactions to the situation in front of me totally at odds with the gravity and sadness of it all.

I wonder if I would still be having a tough time with missing her and grieving for her if I had seen her body at the funeral home. I just could not walk in there and see her one last time because I was terrified that would be how I remembered her. Which is silly, because I saw my Memaw’s body and I still remember her in life, not death. Looking back, I can see that if I saw her body I would have lost it and I don’t think I would have recovered from that. My soul and my heart would have broken so completely that I would not have left that funeral home as a sane person. So, I smiled, I greeted, I did everything to be cordial and accommodating to everyone.

Then, in the weeks and months that followed, I never let go of that façade. I kept up the mask most of the time. Any fluctuations of grief I felt were quickly buried and shoved down into a darker part of myself. I feel the grief and the pain bubbling under the surface, like an active volcano with no caldera to release the pressure.

I even convinced myself that being laid off 3 months after she died was a good thing. The day they brought us all into that room to tell us we were now unemployed I felt joy and relief. Again, totally at odds with the situation. I told myself I would finally be free of that godawful stress from having a shitty supervisor and manager (though this was certainly true). I convinced myself I would finally get the rest I so needed. I had just started back on my HIV meds again after having been off of them for months, which took its toll on my health. Oh I was certainly glad to be out of that toxic environment, but instead of using my time off to reflect and to come to terms with my grief, I spent the time watching mindless tv and playing games on my iPad.

And now a year later I am barely treading water. I am so tired. I can never get my energy back, ever. And that is bringing me down and fighting against the antidepressant that I religiously take. So now what. I don’t know. I just want to fall asleep and not wake up again. That would be the best thing to happen. Until that happens, I muddle along through my days, each one bleeding into the next one. No joy, no laughter, no love. At least I have Kitty, though even he bites me sometimes, hahaha.