SieOma

Things certainly do look different once the shock is gone.

Michelle, I "liked" your post, thinking it might help you find it again. One thing about a community of widows/ers coming together to share is that you will always find someone who understands your thoughts, your feelings, and even your actions and circumstances.

I remember sometimes longing for the early days when how I looked and felt was expected. Hugs to you.

Got a funny memory or favorite story about him/her? Tell it.

How is everybody doing?

I don't think any of you will recognize me. I became a member of the old board in 2010, and tried to keep this thread going there. I think we ended up with 4 threads linked together because they got so long and attention spans tend to be short now. So... What was he or she like? What did they not like? Got a memory playing in your head or a favorite memory? Say as much or as little as you want. Every post gets read.

Missing AC, I didn't like having his ashes displayed. I put it away until I was ready to spread the ashes, though it was kept accessible for all of us, any time. Eventually, I spread them.

I have a teddy bear and level zero shame. Post widowhood, I realized if I am getting through life without maintaining a diet of Elmer's paste, I am doing great!

Ideally, you would have had a plan to come off the antidepressant, so that your nervous habits wouldn't simply resume as if they had been paused, and that's sort of what is happening to you. If you can find ways to break those habits and to quiet your inner chaos on your own, it is definitely worth making an effort to do so before going back on the antidepressant. In your case, if you think of depression and an antidepressant as a badly broken arm and a cast, then you understand the antidepressant (the cast) holds things together so time can work on those bones to heal, but when the cast comes off, you have to learn to use that arm again. I say all that to say be patient with yourself and while you are off them, see if you can handle things without them, but understand you will have to make an effort to learn how. I have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and I've lived with it on and off (and on and off) medication for a long time now, so understand that I'm not coming from a place of ignorance. I'm just offering something to consider based on my own experience.

By the way, moving turned out to be great for my kids as well.

I moved after the first anniversary of his death, but I wanted to go within a few months. I stayed as long as I did only because I didn't want to further uproot my kids. It happened to work out that the last night I spent in that house was an anniversary of our wedding. It seemed fitting, though... Anyway, that was the best decision I made, by far. I knew better than to think I was escaping grief. Like you, I was also angry at some people I constantly ran the risk of encountering. However, none of it was about running away. Staying there caused a stagnation; moving let me breathe, gave me the space (somewhat due to anonymity) to just be... That's what I needed most, and it's something I think you just might understand without further explanation. You wrote that you "NEED" to move. It is time to go then. Best of luck to you.

Having lost a love and found another love is hard to experience, let alone explain to others who will never get it. I'm glad she wrote that and it was shared beyond her own audience. As for the whole "professional widow" thing, I find that to be annoying and insulting. People fuel careers with trauma a lot. She is no different from the abused child who grows up to get paid for counseling others. She's much more public, but she has to be with this population. She found some purpose in her grief. Good for her! She damn well earned it.

TheJourney, I was very happily married to my late husband, and we also brought out the best in each other. I knew he was the man I would grow old with, easily. Then one day, just like that, he was gone. It's been a little more than 5 years. I now have a small family at home, a little boy and a man I can't get enough of. New Guy has had a very different life experience and approach to living life, so I am also in a new world. I'm happy, and I have thought about it as well, given the choice, I wouldn't give any of this back. As far as I'm concerned it was because of my former marriage and loss that I was able to not only have this life, but accept it. Part of me just shut down after my husband died, but when I finally saw love again, I recognized it and I wanted it more than I feared it (because of my traumatic loss). I consider it an honor of the love we had, the strength of it, that I was able to carry on. I still struggle sometimes to get my head around it all. I want what I have, love what I have, wouldn't give it back for anything, still sometimes miss my former husband so much, and how does that make sense? It is a mindfuck that keeps on giving, I agree. But maybe that's because we get it pounded into our heads that there is a one and an only one forever the end. It's just not that simple, though, is it? When I took psychology, we studied dreams. All we know about them are just theories. Because mine are so straightforward, I tend to believe the theory that our brains, during sleep, are busy sorting through memories, thoughts, emotions. Sometimes, they are caused by a sort of overload-- thoughts and emotions that are just too heavy to sit and think through. If that is true, then it is good that you are dreaming because it means you are working through it. Not that the dreams don't still... suck.

I lost most of my friends. I also lived in a rural area at the time. Relocating was one of the best decisions I made after my husband died. The anonymity gave me some peace and partly because I had no expectations from people. It's far more lonely when people who know and should be better for you are in close proximity but don't come around or call. If I wanted to have a "normal" day, I could. I could walk into a store as if I had no problems and never ran into someone who looked at me with that weird head-tilt pity or fake concern, or worse, like I wasn't grieving "right." Likewise, if I wanted to be left alone and keep to myself, I blended in with everyone else. I took my time making new friends and reconnected with friends I had lost touch with over the years before I married. It was good for me.

The only thing I ever suggest about memorial tattoos is to take your time thinking about the design, though some, like you and me, don't need to because it's obvious. Mine is on my foot, and along the side of it is a line (words) and his signature lifted directly off a note he had written to me. At the time, I was working as a tattoo artist, so I did that part of the process myself, and from beginning to end, it is something of a rite of passage. I'm with someone now, have been for a while, and he has no issue with my tattoo. I'm with you on that note; if he was bothered by my tattoo, he wouldn't be right for me for reasons that run much deeper than the ink on my foot. Beautiful work, by the way.