So You Do It Alone

Loneliness.

One of the more painful realities of this life turned upside down.

It's burned into your heart the longer time passes and the more you watch friends out on date nights and vacations and holidays with the ones they love.

It's sandpaper to the soul to watch others achieve their happy moments and to know that you can't be as happy for them as you should.

So because the loneliness won't go away...I suppose I just need to accept that I do this Life thing alone. I was blessed to find my 1-in-a-million. I hit the jackpot in meeting and loving my soulmate, even if we never got enough time.

Life After Loss: Austin Marathon

2015 rewrote all of my goals. I have just one now. To Survive. To make a Difference.

I'll take 26.2 miles of steps toward that goal this Sunday, February 14th.

If you can donate to this Go Fund Me campaign, which goes directly to supporting The Code Green Campaign, click here. 

 

The Code Green Campaign's mission is to bring awareness to the high rates of mental health issues in first responders and reduce them. To eliminate the stigma that prevents people from admitting these issues and asking for help. To educate first responders on self and peer care and to lobby for systemic change in how mental health issues are addressed by first responder agencies.

What Now?

When the loneliness and fear invades

And I am too weak to care for myself

When I stand back to view the woman curled fetal

And hate everything I see about her

How do I survive?

She sits there now

A person once so strong and life-filled

Now an indiscernible wreck; dependent on others

Turning to the bottle to forget

But first has to travel the road to remembering

How does she survive?

When I want someone to take care of me

If only the focus for a night

But cannot pursue that evening of reprieve

Without sacrificing my pride

I’m not one to accept one-time use

Built to first require trust and connection

How do I survive nowadays with those demands?

It’s on those days and weeks

I’m reminded that right now

There is little value in a person so broken

Fragile enough that a single comment or joke

Can unlease months of self-doubt and reminders stowed away

How do I survive under these feelings of worthlessness?

I ask who do I still trust?

I ask why do I still share?

I ask how did I fail so badly

The one I loved wholeheartedly

To arrive here in the first place?

I ask what is so wrong with me?

I ask where do I go now?

I’ve told myself that I will establish no timeline

That I do not need to search but rather remain open to being found

But I am searching; to survive I must find comfort and reprieve

I must find the feeling again of being valuable to another

Something easy enough to tell myself, but so hard to believe.

Each of you have soothed your conscience with rehearsed words

At the expense of the weakest one here

A memorial service provided you “closure”

But did nothing to soothe the agony for the one

That stood by him even when that grown man looked at her

And in pain said “I don’t want you”

She stayed, though lashed out in frustration at times

Loved him; Helped him; Sacrificed for him. 

You have returned to your routines

You have continued to pursue your happiness and pleasures

You have declared yourself at peace

Night after night I have sat mostly forgotten but bathed in empty promises.

I am incapable of focus, unable to multitask, strained to remember the most recent past

I challenge myself and if I succeed it still leaves me exhausted as never before

I obviously lack discernment

I ask for honesty and have done nothing but give the same

In that I repeatedly opened myself up to silence and hurt I cannot handle.

Perhaps the road I go now is to continue the path I’ve been on before

With Abandonment the only companion at my side

Perhaps now I recognize that I have just two choices

To thrive alone or to die falling short in my attempt

I don’t know what tomorrow brings

Let alone the next day, month, or years

I was just trying to survive one day at a time

To grasp happiness when it appeared to me by surprise

I don’t know when the fog will lift

When discernment and focus and passion will return

I don’t know whether opportunities even await

Or when more pain and disappointment will be introduced.

I wish to simply be in control

But I can control no one’s thoughts or actions

He’d still be here if I could

I’d have replaced memories a decade long of saving others

And longer of feeling as a bargaining chip and not a son

I’d have captured the hauntings and tortures of his mind

And replaced them with calm: with a warm beach and peaceful water

We were going to physically share it together

A reprieve from the demons

A promise never kept and memories lost forever.

It’s time to shut my mind to others

It’s time to retreat to a distance

It’s time to busy myself to provide excuses

To pretend that I’m occupying my time

With (empty) events in the presence of strangers

And to mitigate the time left to a churning mind

Obsessed in my thoughts

“Why wasn’t I enough?”

“Why am I not enough?”

It’s time to remove honesty from my tongue

It wasn't wanted in the first place.

Perhaps then I regain control

Over a life that has been long void of just such.

Wordless Wednesday: Afraid of Having No Control

Say His Name

A family member said to me once: “We’re all walking on eggshells around you. It’s like you’re mad all the time and you said you didn’t want to talk to anyone so no one knows what to say or do so we’re just leaving you alone...” She said it at the end of a 4-day visit that came 6 months after Ryan died. She said it when, in frustration for not 1 (of 5) family members mentioning Ryan once during the visit, I finally yelled: “He didn’t disappear, he DIED!”

Yes, it was true that I said I can’t talk about it. I said I couldn’t talk about it 48 hours after he died when I hadn’t changed pants or underwear or eaten in 2 days. Because 9 days before he died I almost bought the lace, knee-length, beach-appropriate wedding dress I’d already picked out for Thailand. Nine days before, I told him for the very first time what I wanted to name our daughter and he agreed that it was beautiful. Somehow, after that, I’m now making funeral arrangements.

I know you don’t know what to do, but did you think I know what to do? 

I apologize, but I missed the class when they lectured on "What to Do for Yourself (and Others Too, Obviously) When Your World Crumbles"

So when I said I didn’t want to talk to anyone, it was because I had enough things that needed my immediate attention. At the top of my list was Take Care of Ryan. I drove to the ME’s office early in the morning that first day, because, while they had told me they would have Honor Guard standing watch, I didn’t believe they would so late at night and in my mind, I wasn’t going to leave him alone. Nothing superseded that.

Second in line was driving back and forth from my MIL’s hotel or the funeral home to make sure the dogs were let out to potty regularly. Feeding two dogs and a cat that I was now the only one around to care for them. I knew I could not relinquish that responsibility. I had no energy left to think or make a decision when asked “I’ll fly down but it’s up to you”. All that sounded like was “Can I be one more thing on your plate to coordinate, make decisions on, know schedules for…”

Irrational thoughts, perhaps, but everyone and everything else fell to the bottom of the list of things to do. The only thing on the top of my list was Take Care of Ryan. Make sure everything is appropriate for the funeral. Looking back I was fortunate to be in very significant shock. I did not think about him being dead. My only job that week and the next was managing a funeral (as strange as it may seem that death and planning a funeral can be disconnected from each other) and caring for my MIL…writing an eulogy that told everyone that didn't already know what am amazing person Ryan was. Finally, making sure I showered, brushed my teeth, are wore the little black dress he bought me and his favorite lipstick for the service Friday night.

Michelle Steinke, founder of One Fit Widow, blew me away with her list that essentially began and ended with “Say His Name”.

I have to say, the #sorryitmakesyouuncomfortablebutitsreallynotaboutyou is what caught my attention and gave me a REALLY deep, cleansing laugh. That Facebook post is linked above and copied below:

She posted the same day that I wrote “Suicide Changes You” so really all of those points stuck out at me: Don’t expect they will EVER be the same, Don’t stop saying their loved one’s name, RUN TO THEM, Don’t ignore them thinking they need their space.

It is cathartic to share my memories of Ryan and to hear others share.  I still want to hear more things about him. I want to know he’s remembered. I want to laugh at stories I never knew but that perfectly portray his ridiculous personality. If you didn't know him, please ask me about him.

The most important thing that you can do for me, with no expiration date, is to join me in sharing Ryan.

Wordless Wednesday: A Series of Small Things

Suicide Changes You

Suicide Changes You

I can’t look down and see 8-0 on the speedometer without panicking. If I am not paying attention and make it up that high…seeing those numbers reminds me of the exact point on the highway – passing just under the 290 flyover on IH-35 – when I saw those numbers before and spot checked myself: “Ok, slow down; why are you going so fast, Steph? Because you heard his voice. Because you’re scared shitless. What do you say when you walk in and he’s holding the gun? Think – what do you say, what do you do? What do you do if he points it at himself? Or at you? No he wouldn’t hurt you. Walk in and hold him. Tell him you’re here. What if he tells you he’s done? You heard the resolution; this is different than before. He might act. You need to get home now. Why is there traffic--it's noon! And he’s not picking up his phone. Ok, calm down. Let’s think. Think.”

Something as simple as driving 80mph is forever changed. It doesn’t catch my attention because I may get pulled over and ticketed. It floods my mind and churns my gut with the reminder of that day. My heartrate increases; I hold my breath. Something like speeding means so much more than it used to. Because suicide changes you.

Suicide Changes You

I don’t go to the movies any longer. The first movie I went to after Ryan died I thought I was doing the right thing: you know, getting out of the house? Whiplash. There wasn’t much at the time to go see. As I watched the stress build from bullying, I sat white-knuckling the seat thinking “Someone’s going to hang themselves.” Not exactly a positive experience. Avengers kicked my butt because Black Widow is on video with the Hulk as he says goodbye and the screen blacks out. Cue Trigger. I go watch Magic Mike and all I can think is “I just want to go home to my Man, to my Best Friend.” but instead I sit around on a “Girl’s Night” surrounded by married women complaining that their husbands aren’t Channing Tatum. Count your blessings, bitch, you get to go home to someone... I went back to the car and screamed at the top of my lungs, pounding the steering wheel in frustration. Straight Outta Compton was much too violent to calm down: my pulse was racing and I couldn’t relax and be “entertained”. I’ve given up on movies for now.

Suicide Changes You

The dryer alarm going off as I’m trying to fall asleep makes me jump out of my skin and puts me on high alert just as I’m settling into the emptiness of sleep. Well shit, restart the falling asleep timer. A car running over a plastic bottle as I’m running down the street brings the panic and hypervigilance that is exhausting to keep cycling through. Pretending that these sounds and moments aren’t impacting me so I look “normal” adds to the fatigue. “Tired” doesn’t begin to describe the feeling.

Suicide Changes You

Out of nowhere my mind attacks me, flashing an experience of standing behind Ryan screaming for him not to, and then watching him pull the trigger. I should not have these memories. I was not a witness. My brain has decided that doesn’t matter; it has rebuilt its own reality, reconstructed from the condition of the house afterward, the details of the ME's report and other minute pieces of information and experience. These day terrors happen, thankfully, with much less frequency and I have now spent months packing away the smallest details so that this doesn’t happen, but sometimes they flood to the front unannounced and without warning. At the back is where they must stay.

So when you see me “zone out” I’m simply trying my best to pack up something that spilled in my brain in order to protect myself. When I get up and walk out of a room at random, it’s not because you said anything wrong; it’s because while I put back those files that spilled from my mental filing cabinet, I cannot have the external stimuli of conversation and televisions and lights and movement. I must walk away. As necessary as drinking was to get to give reprieve from the insomnia, I do a LOT of remembering before I get around to the forgetting...Because suicide changes you.

Suicide Changes You

I want to be happy for others and their happily ever after moments, but the reality is, the engagements and the weddings, the babies and the big life moments, at times I just cannot muster the strength to celebrate at the level I should. You’re asking me to reach down and touch the hot stove – to sear my skin voluntarily as I watch the happy moments I miss or I never got to celebrate now being enjoyed by another, even by those people I sincerely care about. Biting the inside of my cheek to hold the tears back when a man puts his arm around his partner’s waist, lays a hand comfortingly on her thigh, laces fingers with her, or when carries his young son out of the grocery store on his shoulders. I see these and while I want to support your moment of joy, I’m standing alone missing my Best Friend. It’s a stab to the heart behind an empty smile and some weeks I may not have the strength to handle. 

Suicide Changes You

Moments are frozen in time while months simultaneously pass at lightning speed in a way they never have before. I may only recall 1 or 2 things that I’ve done or accomplished over the last week or month, but when you ask me when was it that “X” event happened, I still catch myself reacting with “Like 3 months ago…” for an incident in September/October 2014. It makes you feel like you’re going crazy - that everything I remember and refer to about Ryan is in relation to January. It’s not denial, it’s simply this inexplicably-bizarre time distortion.

Suicide Changes You

“I’m sorry, can you repeat that?” 

“I just need one person at a time to talk.”
“Wait, what was I saying?”
“I think we talked about this, but I don’t remember…”

My memory is gone. Forgive my forgetfulness. I am listening; I just cannot retain right now. And by all means, please don’t crowd and question me all at once. I need to be the director in this chaos.  I’m not incompetent. I’m just digging through the rubble of a scared and insecure girl who has spent the last 10 months feeling less safe, less cared for, less certain of anything than ever before. This girl is searching to find the woman who was competent, intelligent, and would fight as long and hard as necessary to be successful. You’re not the only one that notices she’s gone. I too want to find her so incredibly bad. But I don't want all of the “Old Stephanie” back, I just want pieces of the person I remember. She’s never going to be back in her full form but I’m taking baby steps to retrieve some of her best parts. 

And in the meantime everyone, including myself, will just have to learn to deal with the sensitive, jumpy, forgetful, sometimes teary-eyed space cadet that is the “New Stephanie” until the strong, motivated, helpful, smart, vibrant pieces return. And when they do, they'll come back added to a more empathetic, more loyal, more loving, more powerful woman.

Because Suicide Changed Me.

The Middle Finger

Some days I wake up and it feels like Life is shitting all over me. I crawl into my closet, don my T-shirt and crawl back into bed. I mean this both literally and figuratively. This past weekend was an example. I was not having it...

Fortunately, there are other days, though much fewer and farther between right now, where I wake up at the ass crack of dawn to bust out a run. Where Life is throwing lemons at me and I'm just grabbing them, stomping all over them, drinking vodka straight out the bottle, throwing up my middle finger to everything around me and screaming "EFF all of this!"

These are the days I try to prove something to myself. I try to prove that I can run farther than I thought, I can get out of bed when I don't want to, I can go to work and get done what needs to be done, and I can be good at it again. They are the days when I forget all the bad decisions, all the negative energy over the last many months and I just choose for that morning, or that day, or that week - however long it lasts - I choose to do the absolute best I can to go kick ass.

They are the days when I hold the necklaces around my neck and whisper "Watch me Sweetie. I wish you were here but I'm doing this for you." and I'm proud of what I accomplished instead of exhausted and disappointed by the wrecked individual that I've spent so much time trapped inside. This usually comes when I've had enough. When I've fought flashbacks and day terrors and nightmares all weekend. When I haven't slept well. When another piece of information deals a new blow. I get fed up with it all but instead of retreating, I somehow manage to grasp ahold of hope and struggle forward, even if it's not what I want and even if it's painful.

I am not stronger one day or another. I am not "grieving" or "not grieving"....I will be left with a sore heart, with an ache of what I couldn't ever have with Ryan, for the rest of my life. It's just that for whatever reason, on one day versus another, I find enough energy and resolve to make that day different. Instead of being worn out by another "no" or by another person's silence; instead of being disappointed by another brick wall, instead of hating myself and judging myself and wondering what I did wrong to be discarded by friends and family and strangers --- on these days I remind myself that they don't matter.

And I make my day count.

Planning for What You Can't Know

This morning I woke up and dragged myself out of bed, put on shorts and running shoes, and was downtown on the trail by 5:45am. Tonight I came home and ran hills for 40 minutes. I fucking hate hills. But the burn in my lungs and the vomit reflex in my gut dulled the pain in my heart and finally blurred a mind currently running low on glucose. It’s been a rough week. Yesterday I planned to run – I didn’t. Sunday I acted pretty normal up until I crashed out at 4pm and did nothing the rest of the day. Saturday I finished a 6 mile run before sunrise. That run is the only thing I remember about last week. The rest of what went on was just some chick taking up space on this planet and using oxygen…

Depression is one thing – there’s a uniquely abnormal normalcy to it. Nothing prepares you for cycles within grief. 

It’s fair to say that the last 8 months and 9 days have all been rough; but it’s impossible to plan on the week where you can’t get out of bed or where you crawl back into bed every day as soon as you’re home. When the week before you’d managed 30 miles but today opening your eyes is too much to handle. It’s impossible to plan for a morning which goes so well and something – who knows what – flips a switch in your mind and you zombie it through the rest of the day. When I spend hours fighting thoughts which attempt to intrude. It’s at those times I think: Who is this person? Don’t you want to try? Don’t you want to live?

Yes and No.

The strategy I’ve attempted is to simply back myself into a corner – pay for the sand volleyball league and you’ll be sure to go, buy the chair for reading so you can set it up in the corner and be productive in some way. Treat yourself to a new dress (one that actually fits) to push you to go out for dinner…

The techniques that used to work don’t anymore because the person they worked on is gone. And I have no idea who this new female is that stands in her place. Because the thing is, you can’t plan for literally nothing mattering. 

It’s so hard to decide a course of action when 5 minutes or 2 hours or 1 day or 2 weeks later your feeling will flip and overwhelm you. You can’t expect that even something as standard as feeding the dogs, feeding the cat, or feeding yourself will actually happen. Sometimes it’s because you literally cannot remember. Sometimes it’s because you don’t really care. I feel like I should care, but right now I don’t even feel.

An Assault On Myself By Myself

Maybe I’m remembering this all wrong. Maybe I’m not the person I think I am. I have grasped tightly to the label “widow” as its definition most closely mirrors how I view myself, but is that even wrong? Do I even deserve that? I would have done anything for you, Ryan. We talked about this and I was setting everything up to make that happen because it was best for you – so it was necessary for us.

The abandonment by those around me, the ones who promised when no promise was requested, the ones who never made a promise to begin with, the ones you expected by default to stay and the ones you truly felt would…have they left because I carry a tag they think I do not deserve? Have they made the connections in the string of events, cast their blame, and turned their backs on me because of it? I hate them for doing that but I understand that decision, because I do carry the blame. I have chosen, months later now, to learn from the regrets but am nowhere near forgiveness for the guilt. The bits and pieces that are separated into those 2 piles are very well defined now; I am rational at least, enough to see that. Regrets would not have changed the outcome, they would have simply provided better memories to me, the survivor, and maybe for my Love, though not survived. The horrible details that are placed in the guilt pile are the ones which undoubtedly would have kept him here by my side. I do not wish for them to be in that pile, I do not choose them to be. They simply are. Perhaps then, to others, I am a person so unloveable and painful to be around that removing me entirely is a rational decision I just cannot see for myself. 

Perhaps I an addict to grief and unwilling to admit it.

I know my brain is warped. In a bizarre way it’s almost as if I can feel that I am not just chemically but structurally different.  Feeling physiologically incapable of tasks that you were otherwise competent to perform is so incredibly frustrating.

I want Ryan back. I also want my brain back. I don’t need a diagnosis because I already recognize this environment that I am residing in – one so atypical for me. I sit back as a casual observer wondering who this person is with an obvious aphasia, with anxiety, the woman who cannot retain information, who cannot carry conversations on with multiple people at a time because the conversations in her head cannot be kept separate from those flowing from her lips. Who is that person? This woman who observes herself externally…she studied this, this was her passion, the study of neurobiology put a smile on her face and woke her up for years on early mornings and kept her locked in a dark room late at night to better understand this phenomenal structure that is the mammalian brain.

That woman is now trapped by a mind she cannot escape, by a brain that attacks her when she least expects. Her decisions over the last 7 months and 15 days have not always been logical or appropriate, though she extends to herself forgiveness for those. But how do you continue to wake up when waking up entails constantly fighting yourself to hit a level best described as functional? If struggling for that is the best I’ve got, and if that alone exhausts me, how will I ever expect to hit a plane dubbed successful again? Why, Brain, why are you attacking me? Why, Body, are you so slow to recover and so quick to break down? I am not wallowing, I am fucking trying!

Wordless Wednesdays: Remember You've Survived

And holy fuck have there been some brutally bad days in there...

The Difference Between Losing the Battle & Winning

A friend posted the photo this morning.

I've spent the last 3-4 weeks so busy I'm left exhausted, frustrated, defeated, and mostly numb & empty. I mostly prefer numb to the searing pain that was the weeks before. I have transitioned I think to speak of details of Ryan's death as statements of fact, separated from their emotional connection. I worry how this makes me appear to others (i.e. "insensitive", "crazy", "strong", "detatched") and while I say I don't really care - I do.

My fight is almost exclusively in my mind now. I've packaged up things so well that I am no longer the reactive, teary-eyed person in public that I'm anticipated to be or that people are scared I will turn into. I'm the occasionally screaming, silent tear mourner that lost her Every Day nearly 6 months ago now. The battle remains almost exclusively in private now.

I fear not seeing the year 2016 by my own hand. I fear looking back at 35 and wondering why I am still where I am at. I fear that if I move forward I will be subject to a different level of insensitive comments.

I want to take a trip. I want to challenge my brain and take the MCAT, continuing on with school. I want to crush it on the marathon next year. I want to be the little white lady one day drinking Guinness and telling stories and sharing experiences that leave people's mouths wide open and who then walk away inspired. All of these take day-by-day and even moment-by-moment struggles to challenge the way I can't help but think and the darkness I'd prefer to disappear into.

Just because I want those positives doesn't mean I still don't want Ryan. Running well next year, experiencing another birthday, finding my passions and trying new things doesn't negate the feelings of wishing for him to be there with and for me. It doesn't dull the pain of him not being there; it probably intensifies it. Because I'll look for him and not find him at the finish line, I'll cry for the empty spot on the beach next to me and the seat that won't be filled at graduation.

People are confused at times: "moving forward" = "moving on" they think. Ryan won't ever be forgotten. His memory brings me JOY, not pain! My Sweetheart won't ever not be loved, mourned, and missed. He was my first choice - robbed from me not by my own or his wishes. I can still carry him with me, literally and metaphorically, as I search for my own meaning in life and push myself to live in a way that he would be proud of. For now, I wander numb through the house - private tears running down my face searching for enough strength to begin the arduous task of feeding myself or even getting out of bed, hoping for strength to be gifted to me by a stranger or a less-than-handful of friends that didn't lose hope in me.

The Better than Others Days

Stumbled across this today.

I realized recently that I've spend 5 months waiting for something else bad to happen. I'm waiting for someone else I know to die, waiting to get sick, waiting for something to break, waiting for life stresses to come in and take over...

• He died Tuesday.
• That evening and on Wednesday day, I had already shifted into "support others" mode driven, in part, by the fact that I had no say in anything...things that, as horrible as they were, I expected (granted - 50 years from now) that I would be solely responsible for.
• Thursday was the family viewing. Thursday, being driven home, we got pulled over.
• Friday was the funeral.
• Saturday the check engine light came on.
• Sunday I got pulled over for a broken headlight. 
• Monday his sweet girl went to the vet for peeing blood.
• Tuesday I had to take his ashes to another state. They were not mine to keep.

That was just 1 week: I wonder why I'm waiting for awful to continue? And a lot has happened since.

I'm really hoping for just moments - hours, afternoons, maybe a whole day? - where I'm taken care of. Where I don't have to figure out things for others, to drain my energy consoling another, to take care of things on my own, for someone to ask what I need instead of telling me what I should/shouldn't and after they ask to just listen - letting me trust them. 

I've had a few moments. They were awesome.

I don't want to be selfish. I want to be helpful to others. Sometimes my body and my heart and my mind have gone through a day or a week or a month(s) of being completely drained.

People say some days are better than others. Today is a better-than-others day. I used to call them "not awful" days. The pre-January Stephanie always searched for the silver lining. I haven't done so well with that recently. Maybe I just start calling days like today my new "good" days.

I realized yesterday, after a suggestion was made to me, that the gloom-and-doom comments I've been responding with - in completely honest fear of the other shoe dropping - maybe those are part of the reason that I'm not finding people available to be there when I do collapse.