Dirty Laundry

Everybody's got it.
Does anyone understand how straight up SPOOKY it is to be in the car having an argument with your fiance when suddenly the wedding song you danced to with your late husband comes on the radio? It was like he was trying to intervene, or maybe to tell me he's sill here for me.
When my heart is all twisted up and I get that pain in my chest, the pain of heart ache, I never know what to do with myself. Usually I find myself curled up in the fetal position crying on my bed or my couch. I don't know what to do anymore. It's overwhelming. That's when I start to think there is no way out of this mess. Ever. This is my moment of weakness. Everyone has them. Oprah has them, and that means everyone has them. I don't do well with changes. I move up to NC, and have a breakdown. Can hardly get through a day of classes for fear of failing- and that is exactly what happened. I worried about it and sent it out into the universe so much that it actually happened. Good job, S. Right now my head is going through verses of negative self-talk. You idiot. What were you thinking. This is all your fault. How did you think this was going to happen with  no family around? Just forget it. You can't do anything right. Part of this is stress and part or most of it relates to depression (I think). When you get to the edge of the well and you're standing there trying to decide whether or not to jump, merely putting a toe over the side can send you tumbling down the dark abyss. It's too easy to give up. That's not what I'm made of. I'm the one who will do over and over and over again until something makes me stop. My middle name is tenacious. Not really. It's Elizabeth. Or am I mistaking tenacity for stupidity? I don't know. Life and conviction has led me HERE for some reason. Here I am. What will you do with me, God?

Forgiving

Can we forgive ourselves? Is that really possible if you are a Christian? I believe in the Lutheran doctrine which says that God is the only one who can forgive us. R's death was a choice he made, and I know that intellectually. But there is still guilt. And what to feel guilty of if I was not the one to kill him? Lots of things: simply being alive while he is gone, what could I have done to stop him? (answer: nothing), why wasn't I able to save him when I found him? (answer: it was too late), etc...the list goes on and on. Some of these things are logical and some are not. Through all of my reading I have learned that with any kind of death there is guilt. It seems to be a criteria for the grieving process. And so what do I forgive myself of? Or what do I ask God to forgive me of? Whatever I can; for instance, anything I ever did to hurt R, not being able to help in some way, being angry at R, all kinds of things. Anger is one of the biggest issues I have. I get angry for the littlest, stupidest things and it is sometimes intrusive and inconvenient. Example: the other day I was happily walking my son into the YMCA for his swim lesson. It was twilight and a huge firetruck sat in the front entrance with it's lights flashing around. As I walked past the firetruck I was instantly transported back to that horrible evening when R decided to kill himself. When we found him it was twilight, the sky was the same color, it was damn near the same exact time of day, and after I called 911 there was a huge firetruck, ambulance and 2 police cars sitting in my front yard with the soft light of evening in the background. I sat on my front steps praying in a panic and wondering what in the hell to do with  my son at this moment. How to protect him? You cannot. You cannot protect your children from everything in the world. I think I had good instincts in keeping him with me, and explaining to him in very simple language what was happening. And back to my anger: walking past a firetruck is a simple task, right? Normally one  might wonder, what happened here? Is everyone OK? But not me. I think about how we came home and found him hanging there - and proceed to think, You son of a bitch. I can't even walk past a firetruck without thinking of what you did. How could you do that?! How could you do that to your son?! 

However, this truly is a process. And each time I am reminded of his suicide, the cut hurts a little less and a little less and I am able to move past it. Deep wounds do heal. It just takes time and care, like healing from a heart surgery. My chest was opened and worked on, and sewn back up again, but the true healing takes much longer with special care for months and months and maybe even years afterwards.

Reflection

It is amazing to me how you can live with someone in the same house (such as your spouse) and not know everything about them. Knowing someone requires communication. Just because you live together does not mean you will automatically maintain intimacy in your relationship.

R. and I were both introverts. I did not know, as I do now, that this can be a bad combination for a marriage. We tend to keep things inside, internalizing it all, until one day it comes blasting out like a volcano. Volcanoes are not good for marriages. They start fires all over the place. This is a dangerous place for a relationship. Too much internalizing, not enough communication can let someone slip through the cracks of mental health. This is one of the reason's why R's death was such a shock. I knew that he was depressed, however, I did not know just how low he had sunk.

One of my mistakes was that I stopped expressing my feelings. The less I expressed my feelings, the more difficult it became to do it. Even the most typical spousal issues (sharing of chores, finances, etc...) were hard for me to put into words. I came to a point where I would try to put it into the simplest most basic sentence I could come up with, such as: I do not like it when ________________ .

The point is, we were both keeping our thoughts and feelings inside to save each other the stress of an argument. But, this backfired completely. It caused more stress for us to hold everything inside and pretend like things were okay, than to have an uncomfortable discussion. As time passed on, we grew further apart due to our busy everyday lives and not making time for our relationship. Soon I didn't know how R. felt about anything. I didn't recognize him anymore. Who was this irritable, angry person? This was not the person I married. And I'm sure he felt the same way about me. I felt that I had turned into a different person, and I was not pleased with myself. I am working on forgiving myself and forgiving R. The guilt that comes with death cannot stay.