It’s been three weeks.
I still feel like I’m moving in slow motion. My Ambien hasn’t arrived yet (stupid mail-order pharmacy) so I’ve been taking Tylenol PM to try and help myself sleep. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Overall, I feel okay in a general sense - I mean, I don’t feel the raw sting of loss constantly on the surface, the way I did after my marriage imploded - yet there’s this subtle feeling of… I don’t know what… emptiness? Even that’s not it. I can’t really describe it. But there’s something subtle and pervasive still lurking there, making me unable to sleep soundly, making me feel like I’m walking through molasses a lot of the time.
I was chatting with Jenny on GTalk yesterday and she said something like, “Grief takes a surprising amount of time.” I don’t think “surprising” was the exact word she used, but you get the gist.
I told her that I was starting to worry that I’m annoying the people around me. She said that should be the last thing on my mind right now. I know, I know.
When the initial arrangements were being made for my dad to go into hospice care, a friend told me, “I won’t sugarcoat it: this will be the hardest thing you ever do.” I’m not sure that’s true, for me. I think all the shit with my marriage was harder - although I realize it’s not really a case of degrees of hardness, but different kinds of hardness. With that, I ached, deeply; my whole body felt it, I lost weight, my mind was a mess, I tried to keep up appearances, I moved halfway across the country, I cried so much that I thought surely I couldn’t cry anymore - and then I cried some more. It was like this Xiaolu Guo quote I saw today on Rachel’s Tumblr:
People always say it’s harder to heal a wounded heart than a wounded body. Bullshit. It’s exactly the opposite—a wounded body takes much longer to heal. A wounded heart is nothing but ashes of memories. But the body is everything. The body is blood and veins and cells and nerves. A wounded body is when, after leaving a man you’ve lived with for three years, you curl up on your side of the bed as if there’s still somebody beside you. That is a wounded body: A body that feels connected to someone who is no longer there.
That’s not how this is. Like I said, it’s more subtle. But still real.
I will still maintain, if forced to choose (when would I ever be forced to choose?!) that the marriage stuff was “worse” - but this is just weird and unnerving. And even with all the caveats in mind, I still feel kind of pissed off at myself for thinking there should be a comparison.
If you’ve sent me an email and I haven’t responded, please be patient with me. Maeve, I know I need to email you. You too, Niki. And others. But please, be patient… this is a bizarre time for me. Hopefully I’ll snap out of the slow motion soon - or whenever the time is right, anyway.
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One Response to "Three weeks"
Cut yourself some slack, Amber. Grief happens the way it happens, and as much as it’s good to watch the ups and downs of your emotions, remember that there’s no RIGHT way to do it. You’ll do it in your way, and that will be precisely the right way. Your friends will understand.
And I just love the image of walking through molasses. That’s rich.
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