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Comment by Michael on January 31, 2017 at 3:50pm

I am probably going into a two-week day program to see if i can get a little better. Right now, im barely functioning.

Comment by Michael on January 31, 2017 at 8:34am

Morgan and John
Thanks for your comments. Nothing has happened yet. Id like help but not sure anything can make it better. I wake up each morning back in hell. Get out of bed? Probably should but have no reason. What gets you up? I have no job, no kids, am alone. Wife's kids expect me to move to live with them. I said i would and we are buying a house together. Not sure how i'll get there. Its 1000 miles away. Im lost.

Comment by morgan on January 31, 2017 at 2:58am

Mel, You are still as in love today as you were the day that picture was taken.  Such a loving happy couple.  Its easy to spot.  

Somehow each of us who had that kind of love have to help each other now. Prop each other up.  Ask for help when we can't move the mountain around in the room.  

It helps me every day to come here and know I had a love that I see others had, as deeply and as strongly as they did. And that as weird as it sounds that the struggles to maintain this empty life now is a shared struggle.  

I am right now writing late into the night because I don't want to go to sleep.  Maybe I think if I don't that I will be so tired I wont have to wake up tomorrow.  Maybe I am trying to defend against another meltdown because i feel one coming and the minute my head goes all the way down onto the pillow thats when it will decide to come on me.  I know it. I can feel it so I am trying to avoid it by staying away from the final laying down of my head.

And Bluebird, I just want you to know you were the first person who really gave me permission to write my true feelings.  There are other websites I had been on where people just wanted to gloss over grief.  I understand I need to keep trying so I am not a burden to someone else but that doesn't mean I have to like it.  You were the one person who was willing to write what you were feeling.  That was quite awhile ago but I believe it was a watershed moment for me.  I needed to be able to be honest and you were the person who wrote in a way where I knew I had found solid ground to express how I really felt about losing my husband.  And I still do and I thank you for being truthful and honest.   And I believe this site might not have been that way without you.  So thanks......

And to everyone else, I really need a lot of propping up.  I feel so inadequate most of the time.  I fake it especially around people who don't know me and most of the time I avoid people anyhow but its hard to go through life without bumping into people.  There are days now where I can get through hours at a time without a breakdown and I strive to have those hours because I am tired of grieving but it is still my constant companion.  It just doesn't seem to want to go away.  The hours of not crying or being totally lazy I push myself to perform tasks.  And tasks are things like eating, grocery shopping, painting, cleaning, and then there are things like talking to the few people who allow me to be who I am now not the person I was or the person they want to see in me.  And there's always TV and computer for those other lonely hours to fill.  But its a constant pressure of forcing myself to be, to do.  There is nothing that I can find that gives me back the person I was.  

I am working on trying to establish a routine that comports with my feelings but even that is elusive because my feelings are like jumping beans.  I never know when I am going to pop up or settle down.  

Ok, I'm rambling now......guess I'm going to try to put my head on the pillow.  Wish me luck........

Comment by morgan on January 31, 2017 at 2:33am

Michael,  At about the point you are now I remember a friend who came by and I spilled my guts to her about how awful I felt and that I wanted to die and told my truth.  She left and within 20 minutes she and two policemen were at my door.  

People who talk about their grief are judged for what others think is "crazy".  Guilty as charged.  I was crazy in love with my husband.  And the grief consumes the person who has to try to reconstruct what others think you just stand up and slide back in the saddle.  They are the ones who are crazy!!  

JohnT has it right. In my situation the police asked me a couple questions like who is the president, what was my street address, stuff that was checking for mental aberration.  I knew right away when they stepped up to my door what it was going to be.  I was furious at my so called friend. Afterward I told her to leave and never come back.  I didn’t need to be evaluated, I needed to trust in the person I was telling my raw feelings to.  I needed someone who was able to feel what my guts were screaming out. 

You aren't crazy. You are grieving the loss of the one person who made living worthwhile.  You loved your wife and she loved you.  She's gone and you have no idea where she went. All you can do is ask yourself why did this happen.  What am I supposed to do now.  How am I supposed to live.  And a million other questions that have no answers.  And unfortunately have few solutions.  Of course you are in excrutiating pain, but you aren’t crazy.  Others just CANNOT understand what this loss is like.  A bomb goes off and they wonder why you can’t adjust.  Like who's crazy, you or them?  

You need to understand this pain is bad.  It's more than you ever thought you would have to handle.  Nothing compares.  No one is prepared to understand the depth of the pain.  Not you, not me, not anyone else who writes here.  Try not to push yourself so hard as though you are going to solve this or find a quick way out of it.  Its just not that easy.  While you are enduring the pain you can’t help but wonder how it can be so bad.  It just is.  I really hate to say that but it is unknowable beforehand or even during, to think it could hurt this much.  It does.  

We all just keep getting up in a morning and wonder how we will manage a day.  And somehow we do because the alternative is either messy, not foolproof, scary or as someone suggested to me what if doing myself in was the one thing that kept me from reuniting with my husband.  That alone is enough of a threat for me, or at least has been so far and it wasn't like i hadn't done my research on finding a way out.  

Society does not make this any easier.  As John has written from his professional capacity, he knows the system does not understand grief.  Its been underestimated and summarily dismissed as some sort of bump in the road.  For crying out loud, my world blew up in my face.  The professions need to start getting a clue.  I believe if any of them are reading these sites they should be reevaluating their faulty prognosis's as of yesterday.

Small steps, try not to think too far ahead.  The TV and computer are your friends. Write about your feelings.  It helps.  Take care.

morgan

Comment by John T. on January 30, 2017 at 9:57pm

Michael, The idea of you being evaluated by a "psychiatric team" is unlikely.  Unless a psychiatrist, a psychologist, or other professional believes you are a danger to yourself or others, you cannot be hospitalized.  Even if you were considered to be suicidal, you could only be held for 48 hours for observation.  You would have to be expressing suicidal ideation in the form of a definite plan and clear intent.  Grief, no matter how intense or complicated, is not grounds for commitment to a mental facility.  You may need help but no professional is going to recommend hospitalization when your loss is so recent.  There are too many other options that are less drastic and more effective.  Complicated grief, PTSD, anxiety, and depression seldom require a team of psychiatrists and protective custody.  I've never seen that in 25 years of practice.  if that were so, there wouldn't be enough facilities in the world to accommodate all of us. 

Comment by Linda Engberg on January 30, 2017 at 9:42pm

Hi Michael,

My Husband died of cancer in 2013, I still seen a psychotherapist once a month, she assures me I am not crazy but suffering from complicated grief which covers about 10 percent of people who have lost spouses. When the person you loss is your true soulmate, it is a much longer grieving process. Believe me, she is one person I can let all my thoughts and feelings to and not be judged.

Comment by Michael on January 30, 2017 at 8:50pm

My brother cane to visit me and wants to have me evaluated by a psychiatric team. I dont want to go to a looney bin. Yes, i feel crazy but have not come up with a plan to hsrm myself. I think i need help though. My meds not really helping much. Anyone else been told they are crazy?

Comment by John T. on January 30, 2017 at 8:01pm

I know my wife would not want to see me so devastated and hopeless and in such agony since her death.  I know this in my heart because I knew her so well.  But I'm not where I am emotionally in order to disappoint her, blame her, suffer needlessly, to prove how much I loved her, or for any other reason.  Yes, she would like to see me at peace but I am here not by any choice of my own at all.  This is just where I am and as awful as it is,  this seems where I belong for now.  Maybe always.

Comment by Elynn m on January 30, 2017 at 12:27am

Beautiful picture, mel

Comment by Mel Royer on January 29, 2017 at 2:34pm

Thank you Linda......Same with you and your Julian. One can always tell the depth of love when they see pictures like ours. That picture of  me and Nancy was taken in 1994 but in later pictures we looked just as happy, happier actually.

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