Grief

Decompressing, whinging, sad and stuff. My brain hurts.

by Veronica on May 11, 2011

in Blogging, Cancer, Grief, Headfuck

Sometimes, I write things here and it all goes along swimmingly. Sure, you don’t get the whole story of the ups and downs, but that’s because no one wants to read 3000 words on how my feelings are feeling and how my kids are acting up. Not to mention I don’t want to write 3000 words about my feelings.

Other times, I go to sit down and write and come up blank and I end up walking away from the computer, rather than writing things out. When I’m feeling like my blog isn’t my safe place anymore, there is usually someone tromping all over it with their muddy boots, making smart arse comments designed to make me feel bad.

And let me be clear, I’m not anonymous in this space. I’ve never been anonymous. People find me here and then meet me IRL, or the opposite happens and I have no issue with this. In fact, if you know me IRL and you’re reading here and I don’t know you are, I’d love to hear from you. Even if you’re my next door neighbour, or one of the school mums.

This space stops being a place to talk, when I’m seeing snarky comments written about me. When there are judgements being passed, when they have no idea. When people don’t believe that what I’m doing is beneficial for anyone and so they set out to make me feel bad, by snarky, passive aggressive shit posted online.

That is when I retreat.

I’m not sure if I stop writing to save my own sanity, or because I get angry enough that I want to throw rocks at people, but either way, I sit on my emotions and stew and nothing gets written.

Then I get PMS and I cry on the phone to my mother because it’s a week til payday and I’ve run out of bread and milk and while there is enough money to buy more bread and milk and not have a cent left, this shit sucks.

When it’s not about the money really. It’s about feeling powerless, and angry. About being bitter and not having anywhere to talk about it. About being hurt and upset, because seriously, what adult goes out of their way to make someone else feel bad? Are you five?

My last major retreat from being able to blog was shortly after my grandmother died, when shit happened and I was so broken emotionally that I couldn’t connect enough to write what I was really feeling. Sure, I wrote surface stuff, but writing about how breathing hurt, or how I just wanted to sit in the sunshine and cry, that wasn’t happening.

I still miss my grandmother and the emotional shell I drew around myself 2 years ago has shattered and I’m feeling things, crying and being miserable. Grief is a process and you don’t always move forwards.

Amy’s Kinder Aide was speaking to me yesterday morning about Amy and some issues we’ve had in the classroom regarding friends. She looked at me and said ‘Amy is such a lovely child. I look at her and know her grandmother would have been proud. I think about Lyn a lot, and know she would have been so proud.’

I had to leave, because I was going to cry.

It is lovely to know that my grandmother made such an impact on people.

And then I cry, because lung cancer in a non-smoker is not how life is meant to happen.

Life has been getting on top of me and that’s okay. It’s okay to be sad and emotional and not want to write about it.

What isn’t okay is feeling like I can’t write, because of the judgements being made.

That’s when I get upset.

This is MY space. Not anyone elses. And if you feel like I’m not contributing to society enough, or that autism isn’t real, or that my joints don’t really dislocate, you can get stuffed.

And that’s that.

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I am tired

by Veronica on April 11, 2011

in Grief, Headfuck

I am tired.

I am tired of the screaming from my son. Right now anyone would think that I had cauterised a giant wound with a hot poker, rather than covering a blister with a bandaid. Sensory issues. Great.

And Amy, who is permanently exhausted, and sulky and also has this terrible cough, that isn’t so bad of a day time, but is keeping us all awake of a night.

Why does this year feel like all I’m doing is facing into the wind and refusing to walk backwards?

I will not give up. I will not give in.

It would have been my grandmother’s birthday today and grief is tough. Watching someone you love die is exhausting, when your brain won’t switch off and you get to relive the moments again and again in your dreams. Like deja vu, but different.

April was always Nan’s month, her birthday and Easter falling on the same weekend a lot of the time, Easter was her celebration. Now I get to create new traditions and dammit, I didn’t want new traditions. I liked the old ones perfectly fine.

Facebook keeps yelling at me and telling me it’s her birthday. I’ve been counting it down. Another year gone and yet, it’s not getting any easier.

We were five generations and cancer shattered that, the bastard motherfucking thing. Fuck cancer. Fuck it to the moon and back.

I am tired and grief is hard.

Really that’s all I’ve got to say today.

Five generations.

I hear this gets easier eventually. They’ve been telling me for 2 years now. I’m not convinced.

But hey, Isaac just fell asleep on the floor in front of the fire.

At least something is looking up.

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Not having fun

by Veronica on March 17, 2011

in Blogging, Grief, Headfuck

I wrote a post for a PR company the other day, as part of a new website launch and three sentences in, I realised that I was having fun. I couldn’t, for the life of me, manage to be sensible, and so I wrote the post tongue in cheek and deeply satirical and then sent it off into the ether, hoping that the company would ‘get’ it and still want to use the post.

What the hell I thought, if it’s not suitable, I’ll be serious and use the first attempt as a post for Sleepless Nights. Win|win.

A week and some follow up emails later, I was told my post was great and it would be used, which is fantastic, but I’d also hoped to share it here, because that’s how much I enjoyed being silly. The post isn’t live on the site yet, so I can’t link to it, but it made me realise, I haven’t been having fun.

I’m unhappy. Sure, good things are happening and I’m enjoying them – I really enjoyed the ABC International Women’s Day event I attended and I’m really looking forward to getting married and I’ve loved organising the Aus Blog Con … but I’m not happy, in myself.

I had a conversation with Paul Smart during the opening of MONA about the importance of having fun. I agreed with him in theory, but also, while we were racing around the museum and having the best time, I realised how rare my having fun had become. Yes, I enjoyed things, but being silly? Having fun? I’d lost a lot of that. MONA FOMA made me realise how much I missed myself, the bent sense of humour and the darkly funny and the loving life. Doctors appointments leave no room for satire, or jokes.

Life has been feeling like an endless grind of meltdowns and shitty nappies and being urinated on and stuff breaking and things falling apart and appointments and screaming and stress and really, where is my fun?

Nan died almost two years ago and it doesn’t feel like that long, not when I’m missing her so much it hurts. It feels like a heartbeat and yet, at the same time, surely I’ve been living this way forever?

I think grief sucks the fun out of life, really fast. Autism and a falling down house help, but the grief feels like a giant weight that sits, between my shoulders, making everything that bit more difficult.

Nan died and then my hot water cylinder exploded and then my car died on the day of her funeral, at the fucking funeral home and there was a giant falling out with family and thousands of dollars worth of plumbing bills and then a baby who was having trouble feeding and a seizure and Ehlers Danlos and then Aspergers for Amy and then total social withdrawal from Isaac. Not to mention the two dogs killed within a few months and then just everything.

Sometimes life is too much and surviving is all you can think about. It will get better, or it will be fine, become mantras and suddenly, it’s years later and you’ve been surviving, just, for so long, that you can’t remember when you last thought about how crappy it all feels now.

I’ve gotten so used to things going wrong, that I don’t even tell people when things are meant to be happening, because surely, it’s all going to go to shit before then anyway.

I’m going away this weekend, to Sydney, for the Aus Blog Con. I’m going to sleep in a hotel room without anyone screaming at me, and I am going to breathe deep and photograph everything. I am going to laugh, as much as I can, as often as I can.

I am going to be silly and stupid and I am not going to care what people think. I am going to hug the group of women who have held my hand through tough times and I am going to eat with them and laugh and be myself and trust that they’ll like me anyway. I’m sure they will. I am going to meet new people and make new friends.

I’m going to have fun, despite everything else, because fun makes everything easier.

When I come home, I am going to spend four days quietly freaking out, because you guys? I am giving a talk to post-graduate media students at the UTAS on Friday the 25th, on blogging and new media and what I do all day and then I’m going to have coffee with the senior lecturer about something that might end up being a Very Big Deal, or it might not end up happening. I am trusting that telling about it won’t jinx it.

And I am going to have FUN. And you’re going to have fun with me, because there is not enough fun lately.

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A confession. Or, a post where I fall apart a little.

by Veronica on June 23, 2010

in Grief, Headfuck

I have anxiety issues.

Which is not much in itself, but after Nan died, my anxiety spiralled to the point where I’m anxious or stressed for most of the day. I have panic attacks and they’re getting worse. If Nathan goes out to get milk, I watch the clock and panic if he takes longer than he should. Worst case scenarios run through my brain most of the time.

And really, I’ve always been a little obsessed with the macabre and the broken, but this is ridiculous you know?

I don’t talk about these things, with anyone really, except to mention them in an understated way. Who wants to hear about how the inside of my head is all fucked up? Plus, my body is so fucked up that talking about any of it threatens to drown me with just how shit it all is. Not letting anyone pity me is my lifeline to not pitying myself and falling apart.

Since Nan died I’ve stopped talking. I used to be able to talk about whatever was bothering me, but now, I’m repressing everything. Every.Thing. Which is annoying in itself, because the sensible part of my head tells me that talking about the issues would make them only half as annoying, but it seems to stick in my throat. I talk to myself inside my head, but I can’t make my mouth form the words. I have panic attacks and breathe through them, not letting anyone see that they’re happening. Or I hide, in the toilet, in my bedroom, in front of the computer. They pass and I resurface.

It could be part of grieving, or, I suspect, the grieving has made it easier to repress everything. I don’t have time to fall apart. I pull myself together and go on coping and inside, something is curling up and dying because I can’t acknowledge just how badly I’m doing.

Fake it until you make it, isn’t that what they say?

Case in point:

There is an abandoned house at the end of my street, about 400m away that I want to photograph (again). I live in a tiny country town, on a large highway. I can see the fucking house from my lounge room window, but do you think I can make myself leave the house with my camera and walk up there?

No. I can’t.

I can’t bring myself to leave the house alone and walk, 400 fucking metres away to take a photo. If Nathan stood outside he’d be able to see me the whole time and I cannot do it.

When Amy was a baby, I used to walk into Hobart regularly. I lived about 40 minutes walk from the city and I would just walk. To the supermarket, to the Reserve, to my mothers group. I would walk, everywhere.

Now, I struggle to leave the house and I absolutely can’t go anywhere by myself.

And it’s stupid, it’s really stupid. It’s the little things like having a panic attack because I’m outside alone at 8pm in the dark photographing the sky. ON MY OWN PROPERTY. It’s not like I live anywhere dangerous.

It feels like I’m at the bottom of a well, with the walls closing in on me, telling myself how fucking stupid I was to get in here in the first place and why don’t I just climb out? But I can’t.

I went to a rheumatologist yesterday and left feeling good about the appointment. She’s worked out a new pain management regime for me, including something to help me sleep. Something that in a larger dose, works as an anti-depressant. And all I felt was relieved because now, maybe the anxiety induced insomnia will ease and at the very least, I might be able to sleep.

Last night, I fell apart. Everything culminated and I sobbed for hours. Nathan didn’t know what was wrong because I couldn’t tell him and honestly, after 12 months, it feels stupid to be falling apart because I miss my grandmother. I know it isn’t stupid, but it feels it you know? Like there is a set time for grieving and then we’re meant to be okay. Nathan ended up falling asleep and I sobbed more because dammit, can’t you read my mind?

And funny, I don’t feel any better today. I just feel heavy and tired and sad.

As I sat in the dark silently screaming and letting myself feel the pain that the grief brings, I contemplated running a bath, or going for a walk. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it, because I’m fairly sure if I’d laid in a bath, I would have slipped under the water and not been able to surface and the thought of walking, even around my property in the dark triggered another panic attack. The dark parts of the night are funny like that.

Instead, I kicked Nathan because he was snoring too loudly and went and snuggled my sleeping daughter for a while.

So this is me, writing about it.

I’m not coping.

I’m sad and heavy and broken.

I’m stressed and snappy and probably damn unpleasant to live with.

My panic attacks are getting crippling.

I can’t talk about it at all, out loud, but I’m hoping that I can write about it – and the people who matter most all read my blog anyway, so I won’t have to talk about it.

And at the very least, the new pain management regime will help with the peripheral issues and make me feel less like I’m only holding onto my sanity by my fingertips.

It’s been 52 weeks since Nan died, exactly 12 months tomorrow and I think I’m falling apart. I think I’m going insane.

Note: I’m going to give the new painkillers and stuff a go for a month. If I’m still not sleeping/falling apart/having panic attacks, I’ll go and see my GP to talk about it. So please, don’t worry about me too much!

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Happiness in Small Things

by Veronica on April 20, 2010

in Cancer, Grief, Headfuck

After Nan died, I moved through my world like I was in a fog. I was shattered and a grey fog seemed preferable to anything else. After all, I had small children and things to do, I didn’t have time to be crippled by grief, no matter that I felt shattered inside.

There is something about watching someone you love die in front of you that can leave you a bit broken you know?

And so that is how things continued. I moved through my days, bundled in a fog of I-refuse-to-feel-anything until I got to the point when I forgot how to feel anything. I internalised all of my grief and hello fog, you’re like a warm woolly blanket. Comforting and a little bit hard to get rid of because I might need you.

Nan died almost 10 months ago and while outside, I am coping, inside I am still shattered.

If I think about it, or her, I fall apart.

So I just don’t.

I don’t look at photos of her, any more than merely letting my eyes slide over them.

And I don’t speak about her, unless it’s a little bitterly, with a dose of realistic philosophical thrown in to stop it hurting quite so badly.

There are still things that make me happy though and at this point, I need all the small doses of happiness I can get.

Watching the world from the other side of a camera lens, that makes me happy. There is something about laying almost flat on my stomach and taking photos of toadstools or flowers that makes everything else easier to deal with. From the other side of a camera lens I feel like I can breathe again.

The simple act of taking photos, and coming inside to see how they turned out, it makes everything easier to deal with somehow.

Focusing on the small things leaves the big things to take care of themselves.

I am also the first person to admit that I can get a little obsessive when things make me feel happier or fulfilled.

A long time ago now, I used to work in a kitchen. The fast paced lifestyle left little time for thinking about other things and food, well, food is a huge passion of mine.

So when I discovered that making my own pasta sauces/jams/chutney and then photographing them gave me a small measure of happiness and fulfilment, I did a lot of it. Currently I’ve run out of jars and I’m itching to buy more strawberries because dammit, at least then you can see the results of all my hard work. I have something to show for working hard at it.

Grief isn’t like that apparently. No matter how hard I work at ignoring it, or even trying to deal with it, I’ve got nothing to show for it. It still hurts just as much when I poke the hole, so I leave off the poking and move back to things that make me happy.

Small things.

Gardening makes me happy. The simple acts of picking my own produce, that’s seeing results from hard work.

We planted our six gum trees on Sunday. When we were done, I wished for another ten trees, another twenty even. Something to show for traipsing all over the yard, digging holes and dragging a hose around. I didn’t want to stop planting, because playing in the dirt, it made me feel something again. And I’ve not been feeling very much since Nan died.

I sat in the middle of the yard yesterday and just sat. With a camera in my hand and more toadstool photos on my memory card, I just sat. And I looked at the sky and I looked at my poultry, free ranging fifty metres away. I thought about how hard missing someone is and how much work grief is, for very little result. I thought about all the little things that make me happy and realised that I need all the happiness I can get.

Because even though the little things make me bounce with excitement, the bigs things are going to be there, waiting to be dealt with. Sitting on my shoulder, just waiting for a stray thought or word to bring me undone.

I am not a bouncy bubbly person. I am realistic and a little bit cynical. I am philosophical and I am rather snarky.

And at the end of the day, I will always be the kind of person who wryly tells her dying grandmother ‘Good thing it’s not leprosy, or you would have just pulled your ears off.’

Because that’s how I cope.

Happiness in small things.

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