New Normal

I started reading some of my death books last night. I read one line which forced me to close the book and chuck it across the room. It said, “Suicide leaves the family with visions of doom enough to haunt them all the days of their life.”

Just fucking great. Like I needed a book to tell me that which I fear most. That I will never forget this and never get over this trauma. Not what I want to read. I think about all the other tragedies I have read or heard about in my life. I feel like people can go in two directions when the worst thing possible happens to them. They can fall apart and live in misery forever or they can look at what a wonderful life they can have, if they just try to move forward and work through the pain.

I want to be the latter. I don’t want to feel destroyed and miserable forever. I don’t want visions of doom to haunt me either. I want to work hard and make a better life for my children and myself and be the pillar of strength I never was. But just as I feel like I can be O.K. I have a vision of my husband or see a photo and hear his voice in my head - then my breath is knocked out of me and I am falling further from my strength than ever before. It is a winding roller coaster this thing called grief. These moments of strength come few and far between and I am grasping at them to keep from drowning.

I am trying to think about life in a different way. These past few months all I have focused on is how awful my new life is. This is not helping me at all. Today my sister and I talked about how my life is just a “new normal”. I kind of like this term. It doesn’t sound as depressing as how I have referred to my life previously. There is no before daddy died and after daddy died life – this is my new normal whether I like it or not, so I guess I better start embracing it.

I have yet to feel good about feeling the slightest bit happy. Every moment where I start to smile, every time I find myself laughing out loud, I want to chastise myself for having good moments. I feel like I should not be happy – not yet. But what am I waiting for? A sign from the grave to let me know it is time to laugh again. My marriage was filled with laughter – it was the foundation of our love. That is why it just feels so wrong to laugh without him. I think sometimes I just want it to happen naturally, to feel happy without immediately feeling regret. My emotions are all over the place and no longer controlled by me. I find I can be doing something fun with the children or my friends, then there is a little voice inside my head that yells at me – “Hey your husband killed himself and you couldn’t stop it – do you really think you should be laughing?”

Good times in my world – oh yes – good times.

Sometimes at night while waiting for the Ambien to kick in I look on-line at suicide websites. Last night I Googled “widows”. I found one site written by a woman who lost her husband after 33 years and she was giving advice to another woman who was complaining about losing her husband after 35 years. I thought they were lucky to have their husbands for such a long time. Their grief was real and sad, but their children were grown, their husbands died of natural causes and I was having a hard time feeling sympathy for them. I was married for seven years and am left with two small children. I guess someone else would find me lucky – but I haven’t met them yet.

This widow’s website gave advice on ways to keep you happy and distracted from your grief. She said to take walks in the rain and blow bubbles – um well today I walked in the pouring rain as I took my cranky children to school and there was nothing enjoyable, fun or happy about it.

Maybe it was because I forgot the bubbles.