Life in a bubble with pain and grief

A rant. Blogging—who the hell am I writing to? Blogs are posted online and then what? You think your friends are reading them. As a way of keeping in touch with you and understanding what you are going through. But my friends are not reading my blog. I don't know who the hell is reading my blog.

I do know that I get these wonderful compassionate insightful comments from people I don't have a clue who they are. Just that something I wrote touched them to such an extent that they feel a need, a desire to reach out and touch me back. They get my pain. They connect with my pain. I guess that is the point. They are a gift to me from this blog.

But my friends? They don't want to think about the pain. So I walk around like I am in a bubble. In the bubble I have my pain and my grief. And I interact with regular people, normal people, people who have not lost a spouse, husband, wife. People who are not widows/widower. That's what normal people are. I say things, they say things back to me. There is an interaction—but the pain and grief inside the bubble is untouched.

These "others" I talk to—but they don't get it. They just see—I guess they just see what they want. Maybe the bubble is like a mirror. It reflects back what they want to see. They don't want to see inside. They don't want to see my pain. To them I am on a girls night out. They forget while they go home to their respective husbands, I go home to an empty house.

It is a really strange, bizarre, isolating existence. And if one more person tries to relate to me by saying they understand because their mother/father/sister/brother died, and then add their cat/dog/bird/gerbil died.....Hey, I'm an animal person and I keep hearing about dead pets. Does everyone get this? Do people say these insane things to other widows? It is mind blowing.

You think your friends are there, and they are not. They want to just keep moving forward. They don't want to hear that you are still grieving. They want to explain it away or they just don't want to go anywhere near the pain, the grief. And because I am still in pain and grieving, they don't keep in touch.

I have established what I call my Do Not Call List. This is for people who want to fix me. Or tell me I'm fine. Or have just the book that will cure me. Friends who don't want to take the time to listen to my pain at a particular month anniversary.  Friends who believe I should be over it by now. They are.

I now see there is a universal Do Not Call List. And I've been put on it by a lot of people who I thought were my friends. Maybe the grief is too terrifying. Or losing a spouse is too terrifying. Widowhood—you do not want to go there. They don't want to think about it. And if they relate to me too much and if they empathize with me too much it means they have to think about the unthinkable. Thinking about what if their husband/wife died.

So I am left here in my bubble. In my bubble I can appear "normal" to some people. Does this mean I put my old friends on my Do Not Call List? And just stay with my new widow friends?!?! It is a really bizarre consideration. I find that I can open my soul to people I've known for such a short time because we share the pain and grief. And I can't open my soul to people I've known for a long time because they don't want to share that pain and grief. I find I am now searching for connections and compassion and understanding, and that distraction is no longer enough.

I Do Not Need Fixing. I'm Just Grieving the Death of My Husband.

I had to see my primary care physician because I now have a new one. My doctor of over thirty years left to set up a concierge practice two years ago. His replacement lasted little more than a year and now I am on Doc #3.

All I needed was for my prescription to be rewritten. My prescription for those life saving little yellow pills. My safety net. But protocol demands I meet the new Doc #3 before she will write said prescription.

I painted her a picture of my current situation. An abridged version, my husband's two year battle with cancer and his death four months ago. I was crying in the examine room while waiting for her and thought it might be helpful to explain my tear stained face.

She listened. And then her defining question was "Do you have family to support you?" "No, well I have a brother in Ohio."  She looks at me with great concern, "Are you seeing a therapist regularly?" "Not a therapist, I meet with the Rabbi every other week."

Have to admit I do not  understand the question about family and the assumption that family is what you need. Or that they can help. I do have family, it is just that they are not supportive or understanding or compassionate. For those things I turn to my friends....my cats, my horses.

I meditate, work on being in the moment, feeling what is going on with me. I do Tai Chi, I gather support from my friends, I joined a Bereavement Group. Apparently not enough for Doc #3.

She gives me her prescription: Weekly therapy sessions and the little yellow pill. There was no, "you might want to consider" or "a suggestion"— it was a prescription to see a therapist.
She said based on what she had heard a therapist would help me get through the grief faster. What it is now a race? There is a time table? I need to be fixed fast? Is a psycho-therapist like a physical-therapist? Have to get there in a timely manner or else.

The top of my head blew off! My anger was over the top. And I flashed back on what I had just been reading before she came into the room in Living Beautifully, with uncertainly and change by Pema Chodron:

   "First, come into the present. Flash on what's happening with you right now. Be fully aware of your body, its energetic quality. Be aware of your thoughts and emotions.
   "Next, feel your heart, literally placing your hand on your chest is you find that helpful. this is a way of accepting yourself just as you are in that moment, a way of saying, 'This is my experience right now, and its okay.'
   "Then go into the next moment without any agenda."

Oh I was in the present. And flashed on what was happening to me. I was totally aware of my heart pounding, my breath up around my ears, and the anger ready to spew out. I turned away from her and paused. This was a defining moment for me. I was aware. I thought of what I had just read. I thought about the consequences of my actions. I was making a fully conscious decision. This was not reactive. I was taking care of myself.

I told her I was outraged by her comments. "You Do NOT Know Me!"  That she did not know what I had gone through and what I was going through. She had no idea how I had dealt with the last two years or how I was dealing with them now. All she had to go on was my request for the little yellow pill. And now she was TELLING me to see a therapist. Not "it is a suggestion" but a prescription.

Doc #3 was taken aback. She thanked me to telling her how I was feeling. Was I being stroked? And she admitted she did not know me. Progress. The therapist was offered as a suggestion. Better. And she wrote the script. Probably to get me out of her office. Looking for Doc #4.

The business of grief

"Grief is a process unique to each individual. No one can tell you how long and in what manner you should grieve. However....." begins a letter from a Bereavement Services & Program Development Center.

I have had it with the "howevers". Grief counseling has made grief a profession. A business. There is a process, an agenda, an all knowing knowledge. A road map, a plan and it is set. With markers, and dates, and warnings. The idea of the individual seems to have been forgotten.

Their language. Semantics. Definitions. Interpretations. There are phases, stages, curves and wheels. And they fit you into them. Nice and tidy. Where is the individual experience?

I'm not doing well with the rules, guidelines and warnings I'm encountering in talking with various grief experts. Wait at least three months before participating in a group. Anniversaries are looming events you have to watch out for. You think you are doing fine now? Just wait 'til 3 months, then six months, a year, two years. These are big milestones. Think you have reached rock bottom? Well you haven't.

What happens if an individual has milestones that come at 2-1/2 months and 5 months? Or 4 months 1 week? What if you don't adhere to observing anniversaries and live day by day, moment by moment. I refuse to be stuffed into their pigeon holes.

I'm sure they have their empirical data to support what they say. But data is data. And to create a structure there are the highs and lows that are tossed out. The individuals.

Physics has shown that in observation of particles, the particles perform as the observer expects! Think about that. Individuality is lost, and you fulfill their predictions.

The latest last straw was when I described what I'm going through as a roller coaster. And a professional grief counselor corrected me that it is not a roller coaster! And she went on to describe what it looks like. Her interpretation. No doubt from years of experience. But NOT mine.

Excuse me, whose grief are we talking about? I don't know what I'm experiencing? I don't know how to describe how I feel?!?!?!!?

Feeling the anger

Finally! My blood is boiling. I am so sick of being told what I "should" be doing, how I "should" be acting, what I "should" be feeling. They are not asking me. They are just telling me!

Where do they come off telling me?!?!? They haven't gone through the last two years, the last ten months, the last three weeks of my life.

Grief, grieving, sorrow, loss is an immensely personal experience. No two people go through it exactly the same I am learning.

After all this time focused so intently on taking care of Robert, I want the time to focus solely intently on me. How I'm feeling. How I'm doing. How I'm acting. How now it is all about me and no one else. I want to feel totally self absorbed.

I want to wallow in my grief. Feel every bit of pain. Yearn for Robert with every molecule of my being.

And I don't care what they say. $%(?!?!?#?$?%^?^

So why am I sobbing?