Sorrow

I thought the last of my sad blog posts might have been written, but then I hit rock bottom, or at least, rock bottom so far. 

Three months into my grief journey and things are getting worse, not better. I have patches of decent days; sometimes even good days, but then – out of nowhere – the darkness comes, and I realise I’ve been swimming against the tide without realising it and I’m exhausted. I call it sorrow and not sadness, because it is bigger and heavier and at times unendurable. 

I’ll be weighing out kibble for the dogs’ dinner and the tears will come, and they won’t stop for hours. I’ve learned to just keep going – keep doing all the stupid little things I do, and let the tears pool on the floor or on my sweater. Did you know that grief can twist your face so hard your phone stops recognising you for days at a time? 

On really bad days I’ll pour myself a huge glass of wine at 5pm, but generally I can only get through a couple of glasses of that before I start to itch all over or develop a nasty rash. That’s another strange aspect of grief – weird physical symptoms I didn’t have before. In December it was intensely painful sores all over my tongue. So far January seems to be bad reactions to alcohol and to tight clothing. In the evening I find red welts under my waistband or bra strap that itch like crazy. It’s as though I’m having an allergic reaction to my own grief.

I don’t really like writing this. I know it will trigger concerned responses from already concerned people. I’m alright, really. I’m sure it will be ok one day. Or at least, I’m sure it will be better than this. Once the days are longer and the sun comes out a bit more and I’m not trapped indoors hunched by the fire in the room where he died, things have to get better. I think I want to write this as a way of trying to exorcise the pain, and also because I know a lot of you who read this are also suffering, and that you know exactly how I feel. I feel alone but also not alone – I’m part of a big, silent, sad club.

And through all this I am reminded again and again how lucky I am. I receive numerous lovely messages on a daily basis; sometimes jokes, sometimes concerned requests to know I’m ok, sometimes just an emoji, sometimes a heartfelt poem or story. I read them all. I don’t always respond, but I appreciate every single one. And I have many visitors, including kind neighbours who give me a hug when they find me crying (thank you, Simon), cook for me (thank you Wendy and Charlotte), forgive me when my dog pees on the carpet (thank you, Don) and draw all over my soon-to-be-demolished walls with marker pen (thank you, Mark).

At night and most of the day I have my two little furry companions clamped to my side, and they make me feel as happy as I can feel and they force me to pull myself together and get outside and enjoy the wind and rain and occasional sun. They give me a chance to look at the sky and to talk to Fiddian and to walk myself into a better state of mind. No one should go through grief without animals around. 

Next week I will go to London for a few days and have a break from the house and my current state of mind. Things are going well at work. We have our first customers and are starting to see some real progress after several false starts. Another thing I am grateful for but not quite able to feel ebullient about, yet. 

A friend asked me the other day if I felt depressed, and my answer is no. I have been depressed before, and it’s such a rotten state of mind because it convinces you that there is no other way to feel: you have always been depressed and you will always be depressed. I don’t feel like that. I am certain that I will feel happy again one day. Fiddian and I loved each other so much that my heart is quite full and my resilience extremely high. But the spectacular wound from where he was ripped out of my life; that will take more than a few months to heal.