My brain is on overdrive.  I want to shut it down.  It’s like it’s trying to catch up after months of neglect.  After months of depression.  I’m seeking, trying to find the change that will fix me.  New career.  Going back to school.  Moving into a different house.  Something has to fix this (right?).

Everything I seek is physical and none of it is related to my emotional or mental state – the two things that need the most nurture and care right now.  I want to focus on something in the future, something that feels (falsely) within my control.

My therapist wants to take me back to Kevin.  She wants to take me back to a time I don’t want to go back to.  I already did the things I was supposed to do to grieve.  I checked off the list of things to do and it didn’t fucking work.  Kevin feels a lifetime (7 years) away and this grief feels so complicated and unexpected.  I’m saturated in my grief.

The losses keep piling up.  My theory of “you have to feel it to get through it” and all my old coping mechanisms for when I first lost Kevin are lost on me.  I feel like I’m starting all over again yet this time the baseline is deep depression instead of a general grief.  

I want these feelings to be situational.  I want them to be because of my loss this summer.  I want that to be why I ache and hurt but that’s not the only reason.  It’s because of Kevin.  It’s because of my grandparents.  It’s because of cancer.  It’s because of children.  It’s because of lost dreams.  It’s because of fear.  It’s because of grief.  It’s because of depression.  It’s because of all of it and more.  I want it to be one thing – focus on one thing and I’ll be able to do this and get better and be better.  But it’s no longer that one thing, that one loss.  It’s that and everything in between sandwiched into a pit inside of me.

I don’t (want to) know depression.  I know grief.  I’ve done grief.  I got through that.  I swear I did.  I went through it and I came out the other side.  I remarried.  I found happiness.  I helped others through their grief.  I am a beacon of hope for what can be.  I did all that so what the hell is this?

I’m so sick of grieving.  I’m done with it.  I don’t want to deal with it this time.  I can(not) keep ignoring it.  It’ll pass.  It does, I know it does.  I’ll come out of this wave, out the other side.  I’ll be that beacon of hope and strength again.  I can be that person, I (don’t) know that person.

The things I put in place in my life were to prevent me from feeling this way again.  I imagined every worst case scenario and prepared for my reaction.  It was supposed to (but it didn’t) work.  Things happened that I couldn’t control.  Things happened that I could never have anticipated.  The (itty bitty) odds that were against me ended up being my life.  I didn’t get handed the better odds, instead I got played the shitty hand.  I (thought I) planned on the crappy hand.  In my mind I had thought through every possible scenario of life that could go wrong.  I had a back-up plan.  But there was no back-up plan for what actually happened in my life.

My brain is spinning.  I’m in the wash cycle and I see every grief tossing around together in my brain.  It all connects.  It’s all dirty laundry.  I want to wash it clean, I want to make it better.  I want to put action into my recovery.  I want to do the list (no I don’t – there is no list) and get through this.  There has to be a plan.  There has to be something I can do to make this better.

Why?  Why me?  God that feels so stupid to ask time and time again.  How often can I ask that question and never get an answer?  I have no understanding (I don’t want any).   It doesn’t make any sense.  Getting teased and then having my life and dreams dashed away.  It’s torture (who’s torturing me?).

I’m insane.  That has to be it.  To feel this way and to be so back and forth every single minute I have to be insane.  That’s the only thing that can explain it.  If I’m insane I don’t have to deal with this old stuff.  I can medicate, and move forward, and just say that I’m crazy and this is who I am.  People have to accept that.

But what if I am?  I can’t be.  I don’t want to be.  But I don’t want to be grieving either.  Not again.  I did that.  I’m done with that.  I need to be done with that.  I don’t think I can do this again.  I can’t (but I have to) do this again.  It’s (never) going to end.

I’m fighting this.  I’m fighting this so hard.  For months I’ve been fighting saying I can’t go back there.  When my therapist told me I had to open the door to Kevin and work through that I didn’t want to.  This grief couldn’t connect to that.  It would be too much to bear if it did.  I thought I did what I needed to do to get past the hurt of losing him.  

I’m resigned to the fact that it’s never over.  I feel at that bottom, on the floor, looking at ripped up pictures of my past that were destroyed.  I don’t want to see that album, that chapter.  I don’t want to go back there (but I must).  I need to face it.  It’s (always) part of me.  I wanted it to be over, to not have to complicate my present and my future with my past but that’s what made me who I am.  This crazy (resilient), depressed (hopeful), angry (relieved), sad (thoughtful) woman.  I have to go back there.  I (don’t want to) need to live in the past to live in my present.  

I need to face this.  I don’t feel strong enough to do this.  But I need to.  

I’m hurt.  I’m sad.  I’m in so much pain.  I’m depressed.  I’m so angry.  I feel tortured.  I feel insane.  I feel betrayed.  I feel destroyed.  I feel like a failure.  I feel weak.  I’m tired.  I’m exhausted.  

I’m grieving.