I just finished reading a fantastic book. It's called "Good Grief" by Lolly Winston. This book is amazing because it relates what the main character went through when she was widowed at 36.
Grief causes people to do crazy things. Things that don't seem normal to someone who hasn't been through it. The author did some things in the book that made it appear like she was going off her rocker, but really it was just her own personal way of dealing with grief.
I have done some unusual things in my own opinion, to deal with grief, but after reading this..I don't feel so weird anymore. I dealt with things the only way I knew how.
This book is great for a person who has suffered a very close loss.
I remember going to work every day, my hair sticking up, makeup making me look like a drag queen because I didn't care how it looked, and spending a lot of time crying in my cubicle. I remember not getting much work done..I was just too damn sad.
I remember weeks that were a blur because I spent them in sadness, depression, angst, anxiety, despair. I felt no one could possibly understand where I was coming from.
I questioned the other day why I waited so long to grieve my mother's death. Most people would think I would be over it already, but that's flawed thinking because you never really GET OVER losing someone you love. You just learn to live with the loss.
But I think back to being 7 years old. I wasn't really allowed to talk about my mom, because it would make the adults sad. The few counselors I had wanted to focus on the sexual aspect of the attack. It seemed no one wanted to hear about or talk about my mom.
I was happy because I had my aunt Rachel. She was as close as I was going to get to a mom, but she died too when I was 12. I was never allowed to bring up her name either. No pictures of her in the house.
By the time I escaped that environment I was 15. I was so happy to be free of that monster, my abusive uncle, that I just concentrated on living. I was on top of the world and didn't have time to be sad.
When I was 16, I was in high school and was focused on school, my friends, and being a member of a real family. I was too happy to address anything in my past.
Then I got a boyfriend..and anything outside that orbit disappeared.
When I was 18, things started to come back to me. I was in college and had a bit more time on my hands. Only, what started coming up from the past was too hard to deal with, so I drowned all the memories in alcohol and partying until the sun came up.
In my 2nd year of college, I finally suffered burnout. I moved to New Orleans where I felt more at home than anywhere in my life. I was so happy there I never wanted to leave.
Of course, I had to because I joined the Navy. I felt really good about my life. Then, I met my now ex. I was so insanely happy with him that I put everything I had into that relationship.
We got stationed in Florida. Once there...I felt "safe" finally and started to let down my guard and let the memories and feelings come in.
Only...it was a deluge. He didn't know how to deal with it anymore than I did.
I remember telling him to leave me, that I was damaged goods, and I'd never be good for him. I was just so..melancholy. And he looked so hurt..and offended, and said "no way". We talked through it often, but I found out later he felt he was in way over his head and that there was so much of it he couldn't handle, much less hear about it.
He began to cheat, and I began to isolate. I was pregnant and during that time our relationship seemed good. We felt we could overcome all of our obstacles.
But you know, grief does weird things to people. I began to get angry at life, at people in general, and yes, I got mad at him for betraying me. I had always thought that men were supposed to be strong enough to hold anything on their shoulders. It seemed though, he could not cope with my emotional problems, so he strayed, and before you know it, a year or so later, we decided to divorce.
After my divorce, I was so busy raising a child and working 60 hours a week in the military to deal with anything else. So I put all the grief, from what happened to me as a child to what happened with my marriage on the back burner. It stayed on that back burner for 3 1/2 years.
It wasn't until I had been back in St. Louis a few years and the case got reopened that I felt, full force, what I denied myself to feel for so long.
Of course, by then, I was so sick mentally that I was no longer capable of doing anything but parenting, breathing and walking into work awake.
I think about how my grief has affected my life and wonder what I would've been like if I would've just been able to deal with things earlier. As it is, my relationships are tattered and torn, because of my inability to be fully involved with anyone, family, friend or otherwise.
I think the only great relationship in my life is with my daughter. Oh, and with my sisters. I have a lot of people I love, but not a lot of people who understand me. They try.
I'm not making excuses, I'm trying to explain why I am the way I am. So much of my life I was delaying in some way when dealing with something..and I feel so much like I am behind my peers or others because I am not where they are in their development or maturation process.
I don't really know if I'll ever truly grow up.
I don't know what the point of this entry is..but I had something to say and I shared it.
Sometimes..I just feel like "Little Girl Lost". I know that's the title of a movie but I always saw myself as a lost little girl.
Here's to hoping and praying my thirties are nothing like the years before it.
8:57 am - March 25, 2007
Recent entries:
What you missed - January 16, 2012
%%older_entries%%From hell - October 19, 2010
%%older_entries%%a rant from a few weeks ago - August 17, 2010
%%older_entries%%Tired - June 20, 2010
%%older_entries%%A beautiful lie - March 11, 2010
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