At 3 months

[Dean47]

It has been 3 months since I last spoke to my sweet Nicole. She was my best friend, soul mate, life partner of 14+ years, biggest cheerleader (and everything else it takes to make one feel complete and happy). Every day is still a challenge. Lately, I seem to be overwhelmed with a sense of purposelessness. I still work and have career goals, but it all seems so pointless. My career goals were OUR goals. The point was to improve OUR lives. It seems I'll do better for a few days (usually when I visit with family and friends) but then hit another brick wall and enter back into the darkness. The whole experience feels as if someone performed surgery on me and removed half of my heart, all of my joy, a considerable portion of my hope and most of my soul. Technically, I was left with the vital organs one needs to survive...but in many ways it seems I am a shell of my former self. Most of my support network has dwindled (as I had read would happen)...so the daily check-ins from friends and family are mostly gone. Since the next forum mile marker topic on this site relates to 6 months and the fact that "reality sets in" I'm terrified that this can somehow get worse. I have been very active, still in grief therapy, attend grief support groups, read, read and read...but I still legitimately question that I will survive. In summary, the hellish rollercoaster ride continues and shows no signs of stopping. I hope to be hopeful again one day and am grateful for those on this site that understand what this is like and have given me support.

[Jen]

(((((Dean)))))) So many hugs. I know what you mean about feeling like a shell... the body keeps breathing, muscles keep moving, somehow we keep going, even though it feels as though there is nothing inside but a vast empty blackness. Please keep talking. It's dark and scary in this abyss, but you're not alone.

[Mizpah]

Lately, I seem to be overwhelmed with a sense of purposelessness. I still work and have career goals, but it all seems so pointless. My career goals were OUR goals. The point was to improve OUR lives.

 

This was the part of grief that I found to be the longest-lasting, and see as the longest-lasting for many of my widow friends.  Once the searing pain wears off, once you become accustomed to the unbearable absence of the person who is the most important part of your world, you still are left to rebuild a life.  You have to re-envision your future.  You have to re-discover who you are, apart from the culture of two that may have defined you and your life. 

 

I wasn't able, as early out as you are, to arrive at that problem yet.  I was too busy barely surviving still.  So I think you're doing great, whatever that means.  Ugh.  At almost two years out (I'm a bit more than 5 now), I remember thinking - ok, I'm doing ok - I'm working and I'm working out and I'm seeing friends and from the outside, I look totally functional.  But what now?  Now what?  Rediscovering your "dreams" and wishes and preferences (new and old) is a very gradual process.  (For me, I felt lost and hated DH's absence, so in a fruitless effort, I tried to incorporate his identity into my new life.  I did things that were inspired by him - I learned Hebrew (his native language), I went to lectures I thought he'd love, eventually I traveled to Israel where he was born - and that trip brought me back to life.  So for me, the way to new life was through trying to find him in a world in which he was no more.  It's different for everyone.)

 

I used to liken what you call hitting a brick wall to that feeling you get when you're sick, and you feel a bit better, and you overestimate how much better you feel, and you overexert yourself, and then you feel HORRIBLE.  But I found that the lows were never quite as low again as they were in the first days/weeks/months. 

 

We *are* shells of our former selves for a time.  But I think of us like starfish.  You will regrow different parts where the old parts were.  They'll never be the same, but they will function.  (I didn't want to hear this in the beginning, so if you don't, ignore it, but: you may even be happy again.)  It is a very slow and gradual process, in my opinion. 

[AbidingTime]

Coming up on 2 months and feeling almost precisely the same.  You wrote so vividly about feeling like you have had some horrendous surgery.  I've felt the same and wondered if it is in anyway similar to how amputees sometimes feel.  This part or parts of you removed against your will.  The dread of thinking that this just can't be.  Phantom reminders - I hear her car pulling up...I'll call her and ask....wait, she knows where that file is...

I was living an unsatisfying life before we met 20 yrs. ago.  That changed when we joined our lives together.  It grew to such an extent that, like you, I had one sole purpose in life. Us.

Eveything I thought, did, discussed, felt and planned on was in some way intertwined with her.

So now what.  The better part of me has been excised.  Who am I?  I don't even know.  What is this life I find myself in?  This is mine?  The only life I relate to is nothing like this.  Nothing.

And who would ask an amputee some of the things we are asked?  Do you need help going through her things??  Are you missing her right now??

The only sanity I seem to know right now is seeing how others like you, Dean,  are grappling in the same way with the insanity of this.

 

[beth_krkswidow]

Dean,

 

What you wrote perfectly describes it.

 

No purpose left,. Surgery ...

 

At almost 7 months, nothing has changed.

 

Hugs