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MissingSquish

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Everything posted by MissingSquish

  1. Thank you guys so much. I am a bit better today. I had a bit of an anxiety hangover, but it’s mostly gone away. I’m focusing on the here and now and it’s the weekend.
  2. Disclaimer, I’m widowed 5 1/2 years at this point. I’ve chosen to be single. I’ve spent many more weekend evenings alone, and I usually cherish that time to myself. I mostly have gotten into a rhythm and have r ally cultivated a wonderful life in his absence. I’ve been able to work through my anxiety, depression and PTSD with a combination of exercise, yoga and meditation. Tonight, I feel like I’m back at square 1. I’ve been in the midst of a 2 day panic attack that started with a huge fight with my boss on Wednesday. We had a similar version of the same fight today, and I am feeling extremely angry, defeated and helpless. There is no amount of excercise I did today that has helped to quell my feelings. I tried to meditate this evening and I can’t stop sobbing. I even went to my favorite local restaurant for dinner, and got to catch up with some friends there. There’s a knot in my stomach that won’t go away. It’s been such a long time since I’ve felt this way, that I almost forgot how it felt. I finally forgive myself for spending so much money on myself in the early days. Back then, I felt like this all the time. Thanks for listening to my rant. I’m hoping that the anti anxiety medication kicks in soon and I’ll finally get some relief.
  3. Wishing you the best of luck. I'm also around 5 1/2 years out, and have had a lot of trouble with dating. I miss the companionship the most, but I've decided to give up on dating for the forseable future. I have a great support of friends and hobbies that keep me busy.
  4. Sending my love and solidarity to everyone affected by Harvey and Irma (and possibly Jose). Our office in Boca has lost power as of this morning.
  5. Is there something new happening in your life now? Happy, sad or stressful? You don't necessarily need to know the reason why you're getting these recurring dreams, only that your brain is reprocessing some information. I find that journaling, walking and yoga really help me to get past my recurrent dreams/nightmares. Best of luck!
  6. I don't visit this board as much as I used to. I'm 5+ years out, and the number of widow specific experiences has diminished considerably. I don't find that I feel as alone in this experience anymore, and more of the issues that I currently struggle with are more related to life in general, and not being widowed.
  7. Thanks for your response, Newgirl! My gynecologist wants me to bank embryos, not eggs, due to the higher success rate of unfreezing them. But that rules out having a biological child with some unforeseen husband #2.
  8. This is kind of a random topic, but I figured some of you guys might have some experience with this. I am in my mid-thirties, widowed for over 5 years, and no partner on the horizon. I'm not into dating at all, but my biological clock is ticking, so to say. I haven't been over the moon to have kids at any point in my life, but Squish wanted them. His sperm is long off the table, lol, but I am reaching the point where I need to make a decision about my fertility. I have had a brief discussion with my gynecologist at my annual physical in January about egg/embryo freezing. I don't know anyone in my circle that has undergone this route. My plan is to keep the eggs/embryos until I decide I want to have a family (or not), and to assist people within my family if they are unable to get pregnant with their own eggs. My cousin and SIL have both had miscarriages, and have had trouble trying to conceive.
  9. EMDR helped me a ton with my diagnosis of complicated grief. It's been 5 years since my husband passed, and I realize that I will likely always miss him, and that's ok. I've created a great life for myself since he's been gone, and I've decided that I'm not looking to get married again. The only thing that I miss now is companionship, and I've started to approach my dating life as such. I'm fine with being celibate and having meaningful friendships. What has helped me the most with my complicated grief is to learn how to self-soothe and heal. I journal my feelings every day as well as my excercise, food intake and activities. I can easily see what things help to fill me up and make me feel fulfilled and happy in my life as it is RIGHT NOW, and what is draining me and what makes me feel helpless, upset and triggers my grief.
  10. Accept that they won't change, only your reaction to them will. You may need more time and space away from them. There was a period of time that I didn't speak to my family, because I wasn't setting good boundaries and they weren't respecting my shitty boundaries. The reality for me was that my parents couldn't listen to me cry about how much I missed my husband. They had no idea how to deal with my grief. I started leaning on my wid friends and therapist for that. Now, I rarely speak to my parents about my husband. Instead, there are so many more things that I can connect with them on, and my husband isn't one of them. I respect what they are capable of handling and what they aren't.
  11. Thanks all. It was really sad. I have been feeling like a second class citizen with her for a while, and the walk wasn't even the breaking point for me to end the friendship. Me not having kids is apparently very inconvenient for her. I've been excluded from quite a few events with our other "friends" from high school, because I'm the only one left without spawn. I am lucky that I have a few other good friends that are there for me.
  12. I finally ended the friendship Thursday evening. There were a few other things that have happened in the past year that have made maintaining this friendship impossible. I sent her a quick text, saying that I cherished our friendship, but that we had grown apart. I also said that the decision was difficult. I feel sad, but relieved.
  13. Sexy Saturday night time, wids! I'm doing my usual couch time with the dog.
  14. It was a beautiful day here. I scrubbed my vinyl siding clear of algae, took the dog for a walk and got ice cream from the ice cream man. My dad also stopped by this morning to fix a leaking hose valve. So basically, a very ordinary day over here. I saw my local wid tribe two nights ago for the town fireworks. I wish every weekend was 4 days long for the rest of the summer.
  15. Thank you all so much for your advice and sharing your experiences. I feel a lot better about approaching and overcoming the issues. You guys are amazing. Seriously. ❤️ Ideally, I'd love a telecommute position, with in-office time being 2 times a week MAX. I do much better when I work from home, and wouldn't mind a sucky commute if it was fixed.
  16. Thanks jgib for your advice. I can't imagine staying there for another full year of my life. I fought with my manager about a year ago about this coworker's performance (as well as his absences), and I was penalized for it in my performance review last year. It was only when I started intentionally dropping the ball on my coworker's work that needed to be covered, that my coworker reluctantly started stepping up to the plate (somewhat). I also started to "play dumb" every time this coworker asked me the same question on how to do basic things over and over again, and instead directed him to our manager or our software company (that we have to pay for). I also stopped mentioning to our manager how incompetent my coworker was, and how poor of a fit he was for the job, and instead let my coworker display it with his actions. Unfortunately, our manager is now circumventing the process of my coworker going to him or our software company and instead my manager is asking me if something can be corrected without the software company's involvement. I can't "play dumb" to my manager, as he knows I am the subject matter expert and would undermine my credibility with him. These games are ridiculous. They are the antithesis of how I want to work and be valued. There is not enough time on this planet for me to deal with this soul crushing bullshit. I've been able to turn around two extremely dysfunctional family relationships over the past year, and it bothers me that I haven't been able to turn these work relationships around.
  17. I am grade A STUCK. Many of you know that I hate my job, and that the work there isn't sustainable for me. I have attempted to work with my manager to make changes so that I can stay, but it really isn't working out. I was able to negotiate work from home one day every other week during my most recent performance review, but it was rescinded temporarily the past 3 weeks because of "coverage issues". A junior member on our team calls "out sick" at least once a month during extremely busy times, or when him and I are on our weekly conference call. I have expressed to our manager how this negatively impacts my work and the team. There has been no discipline of this employee and the frequency of the absences have not changed. He details his excuses in an email to the whole team, and they are bullshit most of the time. "I dropped a couch on my toe", "My kitchen sink is leaking", "My bathtub won't drain", etc. Said team member is married, lives in a condo where there is a maintenance person on call and has no pets. Seriously, dude doesn't have to stay home an entire day to wait for a maintenance person that already has a key to his condo. So when he's out, I have to come into the office. He's been doing this for the entire 2 years I've been there. It isn't changing. Ever. I feel paralyzed to move forward and make a few changes on my resume and send to a contact someone gave me over a month ago. I have applied to other jobs with my older resume, and I've gotten a few bites, but nothing has panned out yet. I've identified some of the things holding me back: Money. I'm making relatively good money where I am currently. A new job would be unknown as far as compensation. I'm the only one that keeps my household afloat. I don't have much as far as an emergency fund right now. I have been committing to saving as much as I can. The commute. The commute that I have now is pretty good (about 30 minutes). Better paying jobs would likely increase my commute. I'm not willing to increase my commute. I have shitty work/life balance as it is, and revel in my downtime at home. Health care. This is a big one. I have good healthcare now through my employer. I'm 6 months into weekly allergy shots with an allergist near my employer. I have at least another year to commit to weekly shots before my immunity is built up enough. I'm concerned I would not be able to continue getting these shots if I were to change jobs. They have helped my overall health SO much. Help me to get out of my funk and to just do it already!
  18. TooSoon, my only advice is to stop drinking entirely for a while. Alcohol clouds our judgements and increases feelings of depression and/or grief.
  19. People can really surprise you. Many people that I thought would have stood up and helped, didn't. I felt very overwhelmed with the offers of help during the first few months, and didn't know how to articulate what I needed. I started approaching each offer of help as genuine, and started telling people around me what I needed, specifically. Like, "Can you come to take out the garbage on Sunday nights?" Or "My dog is running out of dog food, can you pick up a bag for me?" People that really wanted to help, stood up. And those that didn't, didn't. I didn't put too much weight in whether or not people stepped up to the plate. I had been disappointed before. But people surprised me, and it made the weight a bit easier to bear.
  20. I found YWBB via an internet search for young widows around 3-4 days post widowhood. I finally had the courage to register and post at 9 days put; the day before I was to go back to work. I knew that I needed to be around like minded people going through the crazy situation I had been placed in. YWBB helped me immensely to validate my feelings and experiences. It made me feel "normal" when nothing happening to be was normal. I have been able to build a better life due to my widow support group.
  21. I worked at a pretty high stress job when I was first widowed. I went back to work after only 10 days off. Needless to say, I was at work part time for the remainder of the summer (I was widowed in late May). At a year out, I travelled on a business trip to get advanced training in my career. It wa so helpful for me to learn something new and to be distracted for a bit. Hang in there. It's hard going back to work.
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