jaybe My life has disappeared as I try to help mom, who still has her mental faculties, and her physical ones slowly erode.
We get some help twice a week, but I don’t have the social anxiety I had before, since I actual fear leaving mom. It’s tricky to tell the difference.
I’m ashamed to say this, but I don’t have a friend I can ask to a movie and this website and an email account is the only connection to the outside world I have. I do go to a gym every other day, but it’s more to “escape”, and I find I don’t wish to “connect” with anyone with the pent-up emotions distancing me.
If I can plan for some fall course or activity, it might help, as it has in the past. Eg. I took a photography course, a home renovation course, cooking courses,financial courses since I’ve left work. I have to make sure the “breather” I take now doesn’t take so long that It’s too late to enrol in something that interests me, since many courses have begun already.
Bereavement isn't like an illness, from which we will eventually recover; rather it is like losing a limb. We learn to adapt to the absence, and somehow manage to cope, but our lives are forever altered by the loss...
Some days it's just OK to not be OK, and we shouldn't feel ashamed about it. I refuse to suppress my sorrows, finding that acknowledgement helps me through the process of addressing them. Rather like taking a garment from a drawer, not to wear, just to unfold it, examine the fabric, appreciate the quality, and then quietly refold it to put it back again. Knowing it is there.. even if there is nothing I can do to change it, I might understand it a little better and see some beauty previously overlooked. Then when I have had enough time to reflect, I will get up, dust myself down, and enjoy all the loving and living that I am blessed with. Sometimes we just need to take a little time out to get over it... (Haley Darby)
