Sometimes I think as a survival mechanism that my brain comes up with, there are times when my horrible, intense grief changes into something else. Oh the grief is still there, but my brain deals with it in a different way. I start feeling dead and empty inside. Though this is also a very horrible feeling, I guess it’s a respite from what I go through every moment of the day and night. It’s like my mind forms a dam around it where nothing can reach it. During those times it gives me the ability to pass Kaitlyn’s pictures by without stopping and lingering in front of them and running my finger across the image. It helps me not to grab a handful of her clothes that still smell like her and pretend I’m holding her. It allows me not to run my hand across the light switch that has pictures of cats on it that she picked out in her old room that is still there. I’m allowed to quickly walk past her key holder on the wall that has her keys and her fitness center card on it and not grab ahold of it and hope that I get some of her skin cells on my hands. I can walk past these things….avert my eyes….walk quickly by.
This deadness and emptiness does not last long before it starts feeling very uncomfortable. I feel like pressure builds up and I start feeling a way that I don’t even know what the name of it is. It builds and builds and I don’t know what it is. It’s horrible. I become so horribly bored but yet there’s nothing I want to do….nothing. But I’m so bored that it is painful. And the pressure starts building.
Then the dam bursts all at one time and I realize the weird, horrible feeling was my grief building up until I could no longer contain it and I’m once again thrust into its horror.
And then there’s other times when neither of the two are going on. Sometimes I am angry. I’m so very angry. The only thing is that there’s nothing I can be angry at. The very person that has hurt me more than I could ever imagine being hurt is no longer here. Besides, I can’t be angry at her. She died from a disease that made her kill herself. No, she never tried to even get help, but her disease made her think that was not an option. How can I be mad at that? So I have all this anger inside that has nowhere to go except for my poor clothes when I am changing in or out of them. Sometimes I just stop and beat them as hard as I can on my bed, or I hit my bed with my fists as hard as I can. Or worse yet, there’s my husband. Who I love with all my heart and suffers as much as I do only he is able to cope….does not know quite what to do with me. Sometimes when I have all this anger inside things come out of my mouth that have not seen the light of day for 30 years and I stop and think “was that me that just spewed that out of my mouth?” So he sits there and says nothing knowing that anything he could say would not be the right thing.
These are the main things I go through, but the other emotions of sadness, loneliness, depression and guilt and countless others too numerous to mention run rampant through my mind like a child in a playground…..only these are not happy.
Below: This is me. (image by Allie Brosh)
My Bright Shining Star 
You are allowed to be angry with her. It took me until just after the 2nd anniversary of my sons death to realize I was angry with him for the choices he made that led to his death (he fell asleep while driving). And once I gave myself permission to be angry and let it out, it was like a weight was lifted off my shoulders.
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Anger, guilt, guilt, anger… it’s a vicious roundabout of uncontrollable emotions. I guess as an outsider I can only say that at least the poison (which is how I came to term bereavement grief) is seeping/flooding out, however painful and destructive it may seem.
SPIKE
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Where you used to be,
there is a hole in the world,
which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime,
and falling in at night.
I miss you like hell.
{Edna St. Vincent Millay}
*****
Your words, you put it all so right, so well.
Revolving, circling, ever-circling
grief so bitter so
unyielding so
merciless
gripping clenching
each breath
hiding scraping
seeping demanding
every crevice of
living
– there is no
space it has not
stolen.
And Anger! yes –
But anger
that no matter how hot it burns
still collapses
in the end
it refuses and will not
soften
even one
sharp slap of
reality.
Kaitlyn – Kaitlyn – Kaitlyn
What a loss your loss
is.
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Your anger and your emptiness at times is very understandable. Shutting down may feel good for awhile, just not having to feel anything. But, the emotions will rise again and it’s good that you face them, no matter how hard they may be.
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Like you my son had depression and hid it – I am also a nurse like you we think we should know better with all the training we get which only compounds the grief. I wasn’t sure if I could face working as a nurse again but I had to try it. As a agency nurse no one knows what has happened and I think this helps – I go in I do my work and I leave no questions no awkwardness. While I’m there I completely focus on my tasks so for 8 hours I can try and forget the crap and I do and it has helped – I has also started a market stall in my spare time which I love. I understand your pain and grief it is indescrible but for me keeping busy has been good and just taking each day as it comes – I wish you lots of love.
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Rhonda I use to be angry at my brother when he chose to leave us but I suffered my own form of depression after he died and I know his was ten times worse, so now I understand. I miss him like hell and try and hold onto good memories, we had many. I hope one day the depths of your despair will soften, the pain never goes far but it does dull. Wishing you sunshine xxx
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I know…. but I just can’t be mad with her. I’m mad at the disease that took her from me, but I can’t be mad at her. I was rarely mad with her in life.
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It’s been flooding out since day one Spike. It just never quits building up. I guess that is how it is.
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Yes, I face them. I just don’t know what to do with them. I know all the things…..I just don’t know what to do.
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Thank you. I wish I had something to do for a living. I can’t volunteer full time for anything because I need a paycheck. But I quit my nursing job when she died and even before she died I was considering quitting nursing after 20 years because it became too stressful to me….even the easiest of nursing jobs I was disillusioned with. Other jobs are hard to come by. I guess people wonder why, since I’m a nurse, I no longer want to be a nurse. If I could only find another job, I would wish it would be around people I don’t know. I don’t think I’d ever mention what has happened even if they knew it.
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Thank you for your comment. Oh, I understand depression and suicidal ideation only too well and is why I’ve never been angry with Kaitlyn. Just so very hurt and confused because she never showed or told of her depression. I hope I can make it until this pain softens. It’s so hard to even believe that possible…that it softens, but they say it does…eventually.
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Thank you. I’m familiar with the poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay and almost included it in my book. But did you just write that poem about Kaitlyn for me? That is so beautiful and describes how I feel so much. Thank you.
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Everyone is different x
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Unfortunately, I don’t think there is any one thing to do. Mourning and grief comes in a very unique package that no one fully understands.
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The photo is perfect. This is me, too. 😦 I also have a husband though I’ve not written much about him because I feel so sorry for the poor excuse of a wife I have become and because I don’t want to violate his privacy but, as you’ve said, he “does not know quite what to do with me.” That horrible, painful boredom….gosh, yes. Thank you for writing, Rhonda. Love to you and peace.
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Oh yes, I try not to involve him in my writings as well to keep his privacy in place but he does not deserve what I have become and once in a long, long while, I might write a word about it….but it is very rare that I write about it. He’s a very good man. We have been married for 33 years and could have never imagined this horror we are going through. If there was a person in this world I hated intensely, I would not wish this on them.
I am so sorry that you are going through this as well.
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Rhonda, what I’m going to say is probably going to seem callous, but here goes.
Whatever the circumstances that lead Kaitlyn to take her own life, and I say it this way because depression still leaves you a choice in dealing with it (even when it feels like it doesn’t), she took a large part of your life away from you. You have a right to be angry over that, while still loving your daughter and honoring her memory.
Anger is part of grief. Let yourself grieve, and give yourself permission to live again.
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I know Eddie. I respect what you wrote in the friendship that it is intended my old classmate. It’s just so hard to know what to think…..or do….or anything. But I know.
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…..and thank you.
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I know what it’s like to have the anchor of your life ripped away, Rhonda, and how it becomes easy to let yourself not feel. I won’t kid either of us that my experience is quite comparable to yours, since divorce leaves behind much death does not. Nor will I pretend I have any instant comfort for you. I just hate what you’re going through, and I hope that the pain you feel will become manageable, sooner rather than later.
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Thank you Eddie.
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Early on, someone told me that, statistically, marriages don’t stand much of a chance following the loss of a child. My husband is my children’s step dad. I was told mine stood even less of a chance because of that. I’ve since released my connection to this “helpful” person, but that advice or whatever it was, nags me at times. A real friend recently helped me realize that my marriage is worth the work it takes. As you know, working at anything while grieving this deeply takes all the strength that’s left. ❤
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I know. I’ve heard that before too and I could never have believed it would put such a stress on a marriage. After all, that’s when you need each other the most. I’m not giving up. We are ok. If he can put up with me turning into a raving idiot at times and if I can reduce those times…we will be ok. I will have to work on it.
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Sorry Spike. I just found this in my spam folder. Sometimes I wade through the comments in my spam folder from people that can barely write English, or write 500 paragraphs of nothing that has to do with anything my post was about, through posts that said my article made their day and it was a very sad post, though all the sales pitches and all that mess I know you know that is in our spam folders….but found this one by you in all that. It pays to check once in awhile.
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🙂 indeed… same with mine, full of garbage, and the occasional good bit.
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