I love Wednesdays

Original date 3 April 2011
 
I feel that I am on an emotional seesaw from the time I wake up in the morning until I fall asleep at night.  I am getting through the day seconds at a time.  I have my up moments and my down moments all day long, and I cannot predict which moment will be which.  Later, I will have good days and bad days.  Time seems to go very quickly and extremely slowly at the same time.  Sometimes it seems like Brian died yesterday, and at other times, it seems like he's been gone for years.

I feel totally empty inside.  On the outside, I feel out of balance.  I'm often confused as though I am sleepwalking.  I wish I could awaken from this nightmare.  My problem is I can't stop thinking about Brian. 

I'm obsessed.  I ache for him.  I look for him everywhere.  I pity the poor man who looks like my husband and walks by me.

I feel hopeless, helpless, and out of control.  I am extremely depressed.  Sometimes I feel short of breath like someone punched me in the stomach.  One night about 2 weeks after Brian died, I woke up with pain in my chest and I couldn't breathe.  I walk too slowly.   Sometimes I feel like a robot, devoid of all emotion.  Other times, I feel like a cry baby.

I'm afraid to cry.  Once I start, I'm afraid I will never be able to stop.  Crying episodes occur when I least expect it.  I cry hysterically for a full half hour and then not at all the next day.  But the day after that, the floodgates open and I feel totally out of control.  Every time somebody is nice to me, I cry.  And I don't know why.

I'm discovering the world of late night TV.  Sleep does not come easily anymore.  I am unable to sleep, and when I finally do, I wake up many times throughout the night.  I haven't slept through the night in 6 months. 

Sometimes, when I wake up in the middle of the night, I panic because I'm alone...he's not here...and reality sets in again that he will never be here again.  I want to sleep all the time. When it's time to get up, I turn off the alarm clock and cover my head.  I stay in bed until the last possible second.

The worst time of the day is when I first wake up in the morning.  It hits me again that Brian is really dead and I have to get up and face the world anyway.  Sometimes it's so painful that I don't even want to go to sleep at night knowing I have to wake up again.  The worst time of the day is when I pull into my parking lot and realize his truck isn't there and he's not there waiting for me.  The worst time of the day is evening and bedtime when I miss Brian's company and intimacy.  I think about him from the time I wake up until the time I go to sleep.

Weekends are the worst.  I have a lot of time to think and nothing to do.  I feel like I'm imposing on my family and friends who have their own families.  I look forward to work. I live for Mondays.  But I wish people at work work would stop asking me if I enjoyed my weekend.  My best day is Wednesday.  By then, I have emotionally recovered from my lonely weekend, and there are still two days left before I have to worry about another one.

I can't focus on any one thing long enough to make a decision.  The problem is I'm so apathetic about everything, I don't care enough to make a decision about it.  Little decisions that need to be made seem mind-blowing now because Brian is not here to discuss them with me.  I'm not used to being by myself so much.  I'm used to having someone to talk to.  I have started talking to myself out loud.  I'm turning into an absent-minded professor.

It's impossible to concentrate.  It's difficult, if not impossible to read a book.  If I do read, it's one page slowly at a time.  I don't really hear what other people are saying even though I'm listening.  Could it be that I just don't care what they're saying?  What happened to my motivation?  My hobbies don't interest me.  My priorities have changed.

How long will this last?