6 month mark seems to be harder

[keeptrying]

I was hoping there was some kind of "time line" where at 1-6 months you will feel this.. then at 6-12 you will feel this..

I just crossed the 6 month time. Just had an anniversary, waited for my husband to walk through the door and sing me a song like he promised every day for the rest of our lives, our baby is due in 2 weeks and I am feeling like I am drowning. I want to swim but I am paralyzed. I try not to think, remember. I wish all memories were wiped from my brain. I think it would make it so much easier. Like if "we" never were. All happy memories and anything related to it just completely tortures me from the inside out. So I pretend that it never happened, like I knew a person "of him" but not him personally. I heard a song on the radio he liked, I almost got into an accident pulled over, started screaming at the top of my lungs and threw up all the way home (when I was able to drive).. That is INSANE. I should not be acting that way.I want to stop. I am too strong for this. Why can't I just suck it up. Why is the first few months torture and hell, but after it seems like autopilot is slowing

down. I can't talk to anyone and to be honest, I don't even feel like it. Anything I would like to say would be used against me and put me in a mental institution. I am alone. I have been chained up, mouth duct taped thrown in a coffin and buried

underground. I want to scream and yell but I can't move or talk. I want to escape but I can't. I want someone to hold me and tell me everything is going to be okay but, he is gone. I want someone to slightly understand, but they don't. Faking

being okay takes SO much work, because you know when you are done for that small talk, you will go back to your lonely helpless life, desperately wanting tomorrow to be better, even just a little better. It doesn't. I try mentally not to "think", I don't want to be that "poor me" - "feel sorry for me" person. I don't like being weak or viewed as weak. I try to mentally brainwash myself to be positive. It KILLS me it is not working, on top of that, quite the opposite is happening

I think, why is this happening now.. why can't I snap out of it? I try SO many different things. I am swimming SO hard with weights on my ankles that just keep pulling me down, I am tired, so tired.  I used to be the complete opposite person. I was the happiest person, most positive person you would ever meet. I would ALWAYS support and encourage anyone. That is

gone. I exist, if that. - I hate myself. I think I don't deserve to have my kids,I don't deserve to live. I am not good enough.  I question, what did I do to deserve this, where did I go wrong? I lived the right way, I treated everyone the best I could. I wanted everyone around me to be happy and I made sure I took steps every day to do so. Now I am here. The opposite of everything I dreamed and the nightmare I could have never dreamed up. I don't know who I am anymore. The passion for things just gone. I don't want it to be like this forever, but I don't know how to stop it. I has gotten harder.

[Jen]

((((((((HUGS))))))))))

 

I wish with all my heart it wasn't the case, but I could have written this post nearly word for word. I try to avoid saying "I know how you feel," because of course I don't, no one ever truly knows how someone else feels. But you've described what's in my head almost perfectly. That's no comfort, I realize, but I can at least tell you you're not alone. I am so, so sorry. I wouldn't wish this hell on anyone.

 

more hugs,

 

Jen, lost in the abyss

[Trying]

Tight, tight hugs keeptrying.  6 months is such a hard time for many of us, it's when I started thinking, wait a minute you mean I have to keep doing this? Keep living without him? Keep feeling sad and alone? Keep dealing with everything by myself? Wow, it really is forever.

 

Your due date must only magnify all of the emotions, how could it not? Add hormones and a major life change into the soup.  Right now you need to focus on the baby, allow yourself time to just be sad, angry, scared a little bit each each day.  You can't pretend it's not there or it comes out huge.  You will make it through this and slowly things will begin to change. The awful, but wrenching grief comes less often and less severe.  When? That's different for each of us, but it does come.  Setbacks? You can count on it, there will be some.  But you have made it through the darkness of the first 6 months and you will keep surviving until one day you look up and you will not be swimming against the tide but floating and enjoying the sunshine..

[SoVerySad]

Tight, tight hugs, honey. I'm so sorry it is all hitting so hard right now. I remember early on when people wrote that it got worse for them, I was sure it wouldn't happen to me. I was sure I was already in the worst of it. Then it actually did get worse and I felt panic that there was no way I could handle it. It is very, very hard.

 

I hope you will find a way to be more gentle with yourself. I know you don't want to feel like this is bigger than you. You want to go back to that positive, happy person you were. From the outside, it looks like you are suffering a feeling of failure to meet those goals on top of grieving. It is too much to expect of yourself. Can you just try to just give yourself permission to understand that it is okay right now to feel so overwhelmed? It feels awful, I know. But it is, sadly, to be expected. That always positive woman you were? She hadn't been dealt a blow of the magnitude of losing her husband. She had no idea how much a person truly could hurt. Don't try to make her your standard for right now. She had the luxury of not knowing the devastation you're dealing with. The things you are feeling doesn't mean you aren't strong. It means you're hurting, which is very different than being weak.

 

You wrote that you don't want to feel sorry for yourself. Yet I know from your posts that you feel sorrow for the hurt others here are enduring. Please give yourself that same kindness. It isn't self-indulgent, in my opinion. It is a necessary part of recognizing why you are feeling the way you do and accepting that it is normal to do so. It is hard enough to endure all the feelings that accompany the loss of your spouse. Please try to not make it any harder by setting unreachable goals for yourself right now. Just getting through each day is a significant accomplishment in itself at this stage, truly it is.

 

More tight hugs...

 

 

 

 

[Jess]

6 months was very tough for me, and I know for a fact I did not have as much to deal with as you do. The shock peels off and it starts really sinking in this is real and the dreamlike fog of the first several months no longer is there to comfort you. It is just one more phase of crap. When things are really hard, I really focus on looking to the examples of survival turning into living of those that are further out from us. It can be done and you can do this, too, even when it feels impossible. Keep hanging in there.

[donswife]

I agree the 6 month mark is so tough .

I feel sometimes like its a prison and in my head I have big X's to mark the days

hoping that each day will be the day I am out

But its seems like we have all been given a life sentence and the days are never ending

I wish for you(and all of us) some days of not feeling like we are drowning and not just grasping for air but actually breathing on our own terms

sending a tight hug your way

[lcoxwell]

Six months was very difficult for me, as well. Somewhere along about 4 months, that haze and misery of the first few months started to lift, and life seemed ever so slightly better - not good, but better. Things were still okay at about 5 months. Again, life wasn't good, but the auto pilot made it manageable. I actually felt like I was making progress, then BAM!, 6 months hit, and I was  a miserable, tortured mess, feeling much as you described.

 

I don't know why, but certain milestones along the way seem to be harder than others. The six month milestone seems to be one of those more difficult ones to cross over, even when you are doing everything "right", even when you have a good support system, and even when you are doing everything you possibly can to take care of yourself and to work through the grief. Hang in there. You have made it this far, and you will get through this month, even if you don't think you can.

 

 

[tmwenger]

wow I just agree so much with what so many of you are saying. I am just past the 6 month date and I feel like I just took giant leaps back.  When he first passed I was worried about how much life would suck without him and it really does, no matter how hard I try to keep busy and do things I still am not happy and unfortunately I cannot just will myself to be happy.

[Jen]

... I still am not happy and unfortunately I cannot just will myself to be happy.

 

Nope. Me neither. According to several well-meaning DGIs of my acquaintance, I'm wallowing, feeling sorry for myself, and I should just choose to be happy. "Life is what you make it. He wouldn't want you to spend the rest of your life being sad and miserable."

 

Whatever. He left, so he forfeited his vote. Come live in my head for awhile, then tell me how you choose to be happy. And by the way, fuck off.

 

(Sorry.)

 

(((HUGS)))

[Carey]

"Whatever. He left, so he forfeited his vote"  ohhh yea. I so want to say that when I hear "Chad wouldn't want ........." . Who gives a rip what he wants? Hes DEAD. I stupidly chose to scatter his ashes on memorial day last year, which was exactly the six month mark to the day.  Lunacy I tell ya. But at least I was at the beach and I could drink. lol  All kidding aside .... yes six months was hard because that's about the time reality started smacking me in the face, that there was no end to this and it would ALWAYS be the thing that broke me, changed me. There are good days, not good days .. like everyone says, it ebbs and flows.  I can say I'm still here, at 18 months out, so there's that.

[mo12]

The SIX MONTH SUCK.  It is awful.  Around 6 months is when I was the most physically ill.  Not eating or sleeping.  I wanted to kill people I hardly knew who saw me around town and said I looked "good..."  What the hell?  Cause I can hardly eat, just forcing myself to get enough calories to nurse my baby?  WTF?  Every day I felt numb, horrified, panicked, angry, sad, and nothing... all at the same time.  It was shortly after that, around 8 months that I went on anti-depressants, which is really neither here nor there, but 6 months was sort of my rock-bottom.  You aren't alone.  Day by day. 

[Chrispy89]

Yerp 6 months sucks balls. Just keep waking up every morning and you are winning x