Hope...

[fuchsiasky]

I?m facing a challenge that maybe people will understand here.  I don?t know.  But it?s about hope?or lack thereof?

 

Three years ago next month we took Rob to the emergency room because he was in so much pain and the great drugs he had were doing nothing.  He was in hellish agony.  I can still hear him screaming in the back of my mind.  That was the first day that we heard the word cancer.  And that was the day that hope started to die for me.  It was the day I entered Cancerland.  I remember sitting there and crying as the doctor talked and feeling all the hope for a future leave.  I think I knew then that there wasn?t really any hope for the life that we had been building together.  Even if he had survived it wouldn?t have been the same.  Cancer does that.  And over the next three years hope became a very dangerous thing.  Hope because something we avoided because the consequences of dashed hopes were too big.  How could we hope for a future when there was none?  We could hope for the best life he could have for the time we had but that wasn?t really hope.  That was coping.  I let go of it and learned to just live in the moment. 

 

But now here I am 4 months after his death and I still have no hope.  I don?t know how to find it.  I have no desire to plan for a future because I don?t believe that good things will actually happen.  If fear that if I hope for things that it will just fall apart.  Hope doesn?t feel safe.  So I have no goals, no dreams, no plans.  Just surviving today.  I try hard for my daughter and try to see her future and good things for her.  I can have hopes for her life.  But not for mine.  I don?t even want the life I?m trying to figure out how to live.  I don?t want to build a life without Rob.  But I think that I can?t go on this way.  I think that this is hurting me more than I thought.  I realized that I have nothing to look forward to in life at all.  It just seems like decades of pain ahead of me.  I can?t keep thinking that way or I?ll never find my way out of Cancerland and back to life.  I don?t want it.  But I don?t want to die either.  So I think I have no choice. 

 

Is there such thing as hope after illness?  After loss?  After the hell that is caretaking someone to their death?  Has anyone found it?  Is there hope?

 

[Mizpah]

Yes.  There is.  But right now you are very early out.  Right now there may just be surviving and that is ok.  I tried not to set my expectations too high too soon.  Hey - you're not just lying on the floor screaming, "Noooooooo!!!!!"  That's something.  I started to feel alive again at about 2 years out (I'm at almost 5 now).  It's different for everyone, and I wasn't a caretaker/illness widow.  I have lots of cancer widow friends though.  A couple are married.  Some are in relationships.  Some have kids with new partners.  Some are on their own.  But they all feel WORLDS better than they did in the first few months/couple years.  Just hang on.  Let time carry you.  Let yourself feel all the things you naturally feel, good and bad.  It will get better. 

[Guest TooSoon]

Yes, there is hope and there is a life you will build... just perhaps not yet.  My brilliant, vibrant husband also died from a virulent, evil cancer. I'm still making sense of it three years later.  There is a lot of good in life now but it has taken a lot of time and effort. You will find your way and we are here to help you along the way.  Reach out here, say what you can't say to others because we do understand.  I haven't made complete peace with what happened but I have learned to live with it and I have learned to love, myself and others, again.  Right now though you get to feel whatever you are feeling and that is absolutely normal.  Giant hugs. 

[fuchsiasky]

There is so much I can't say to others.  They don't understand.  They just get sad and feel helpless and go away.  It sucks.  Yet these are the same people who want me to do well.  They want me to find hope.  To see that light at the end of the tunnel.  And some of them get mad when I can't.  Its so frustrating.  It hurts so much that they won't let me be. 

 

I worry about this lack of hope because I feel like it is giving me a lack of movement in all of this.  I need to get some things done for me and my daughter.  We need to move to a new house, but that means I have to pack up our old one and find a new one.  Then I have to set up and build a space for us.  That terrifies me.  Yet we can't stay where we are.  Its our family's home for a family we no longer have.  And its too big.  And expensive.  But I have no idea how to get us out of it!  I have no desire to do it because it is trying to do something good and I don't dare hope it will work.  I feel like I need to push myself to be ok for her.  She can't lose both her parents to this evil disease. 

 

I guess it doesn't feel like it has been a short time.  I guess 4 months is.  I can't imagine being like this for a year or more.  But I know I will be.  That's hard to accept.  Its hard to live when you can't find reasons to do so.  My reason is my daughter.  I let myself get dragged along with her life.  Its better than nothing.

[donswife]

[quote author=fuchsiasky link=topic=2093.msg25270#msg25270 date=145625976

 

I worry about this lack of hope because I feel like it is giving me a lack of movement in all of this. 

 

I guess it doesn't feel like it has been a short time.  I guess 4 months is.  I can't imagine being like this for a year or more.  But I know I will be.  That's hard to accept.  Its hard to live when you can't find reasons to do so.  My reason is my daughter.  I let myself get dragged along with her life.  Its better than nothing.

 

I know 4 months feels like a long time and to wait longer for hope must seem to far away

but for now you have to take it easy on yourself ,I know easier said then done

It is so hard just to get through the day but you are doing that so good for you

I remember being on auto pilot at the beginning and then at times utter panic with all the details and decisions needed to be made

Take a deep breath and try to be kind to yourself

 

[fuchsiasky]

Thank you all.  It is so scary to be in this place where I have to just be.  I have so much push to heal, but maybe that is the wrong thing.  It makes me angry to think of healing...being "over him"...cause I don't want life without him.  Maybe that push is more for others than it is for me. I'm told to be gentle on myself, but then I'm also told to seek the light in life and bs like that. Part of me doesn't mind being in the dark.  The only reason I have that matters to me to do anything different is my daughter.  Cause she needs life.  Maybe I can build one for her without stressing about building one for me. 

[fuchsiasky]

People want to help me.  But when they can't they feel helpless.  That seems to hurt them somehow.  Which in turn hurts me cause I want to be better for them.  But I don't think I can be.

[Mizpah]

It makes me angry to think of healing...being "over him"...cause I don't want life without him.  Part of me doesn't mind being in the dark.

 

I felt this way exactly.  If it gives you any comfort, I don't think you will be "over" him.  I'm not - it's been almost 5 years for me, and tomorrow would've been his birthday.  I have a boyfriend and a daughter who's almost 2 and I'm not "over" him.  I think about him often.  I talk about him.  I have learned to function, live and love in a world that does not include him.  Learning how to do that is gradual, and requires going through lots of painful moments.  Four months feel like forever - hell, in the beginning, an hour felt like forever.  You will find a new normal, one that doesn't always hurt all the time - it won't always take effort.  You will build a new life - later.  Now you will survive, and do what you need to do, and maybe not more than that. 

 

And yes, people are impatient for your "healing."  It makes them uncomfortable perhaps.  They wish they could help and they can't perhaps.  None of that matters - the whys.  You need to do what YOU and your daughter need, not what makes others feel comfortable.  I lost many friends after Simon died, and that's ok. 

 

Are you in therapy?  A good therapist is a great thing. 

[Trying]

I am sure that after Rob's long battle with cancer and the 4 months since he died it seems like an eternity to you since life was normal and you felt hopeful.  Only in looking back do I realize that 4 months was still shock and survival time.  There is no room for hope when you have to focus on breathing, waking up, getting dressed, and trying to function.  I can't tell you when hope started to sneak back in but it wasn't in the first year.  Now at 2 1/2 years I look very hard for things to feel hopeful about.  I find things, small things, here and there.  I am planning more for my future and for my kids future again but it's different now.  I know now that all of the planning offers no guarantees of happiness but if I don't work towards happiness than I am guaranteed to never find it.

 

Be patient with yourself and your grief.  Your job right now is to survive and function at a basic level and allow your broken heart time to heal.  If you look to "get over" your loss you will always feel like a failure. All we can do is learn to get on despite our loss.

[fuchsiasky]

I know now that all of the planning offers no guarantees of happiness but if I don't work towards happiness than I am guaranteed to never find it.

 

 

This is my fear.  That if I don't find something to hope for that I won't find happy again.  Maybe the hope that I will even hope again someday is all I can have right now. 

 

I think I need something to look forward to though.  There has to be some little thing that I can look to enjoy.  I need a reason to get up and keep going.  My daughter isn't enough.  She is the one that is giving me motivation to survive.  But I think I need motivation to live.  Or to even care about living. 

 

I am supposed to move in 2 months.  I asked a friend to come and pack for me.  It will be a good thing. I should look forward to a new home. I should have some hope for the life that my daughter and I will build there. But it just scares me.

 

No I am not in therapy.  I should be!  Oh I need to be.  I am just waiting on the life insurance to be able to afford it.

[fuchsiasky]

 

 

And yes, people are impatient for your "healing."  It makes them uncomfortable perhaps.  They wish they could help and they can't perhaps.  None of that matters - the whys.  You need to do what YOU and your daughter need, not what makes others feel comfortable.  I lost many friends after Simon died, and that's ok. 

 

 

I have found more friends oddly.  There are people that I knew before Rob that I lost touch with who have come back to me.  There are people who were his friends who are insisting on keeping me.  They want so much to help.  To make me feel happy.  They are trying so hard.  But it doesn't work the way they need it to.  Cause I'm not getting happier.  Yet they don't see that they are helping.  Their presence in my life is like a big comfy blanket of love and caring and without it I would be lost.  Every person who makes me smile, even once in a day, is keeping me from falling deeper into despair.  I value them all so much.  I wish they could believe me when I tell them that they are helping.  That they don't need to be responsible for making me happy.  That's my job.  Sometimes all I need is someone to be with to make the sadness less lonely.