Last Saturday I went to a local Lifetime Fitness and got a seven-day pass to see if maybe working out at the gym would help me get off the couch and hopefully stay out of depression. When I went on Saturday night and went on the treadmill for 20 minutes I felt pretty good, except I broke down and started crying in the locker room afterwards. I was doing something new, what would Dan say? I know he would have encouraged me, then made some comment about how he "needs to do something about that,… Continue

I'm sitting here watching some mindless TV and somehow it feels "normal", and then I got wondering if I'm intentionally shutting away what it felt like to have him here? Because if I don't think about what it was like to have him, then it doesn't hurt as much to realize I don't have that anymore? Like the last 17 years happened to someone else, or were in a nobel or something. That I'm not that person. Which I know is selling our relationship short - what we had was wonderful and special and… Continue

I learned something about myself today. I have an overactive, paranoid imagination that I'm going to have to keep a tight rein on for a while. A friend of mine on FaceBook posted in her status "seriously not feeling well.. something is just not right.. hate to admit it, but i need to see a doctor.. really freaked out.." and I immediately thought that she was in serious trouble and needed a doctor RIGHT NOW, and tried texting and calling and was imagining her sitting at her computer having a… Continue

This afternoon I stopped by the furniture store on the way home from work. Last night I was thinking about getting a new dresser for the bedroom, and moving our old dresser into the back bedroom to use for sheets and towels. Dan and I had talked about doing something similar for several months, but never got around to it. When I was looking at dressers, the first thing that would go through my head was "Would Dan like it?" and then I had an overwhelming feeling of disloyalty. I posted about it… Continue

Over the past few weeks I've had so many people tell me that I'm strong, that I'm doing well, that they admire how I'm handling things, that they're proud of me. I didn't realize there was another option. If I don't at least pretend to be strong in front of others then it means I'd spend all my time in misery, instead of just the time I spend by myself. And the only solution I see to that is blowing my brains out, which isn't much of a choice.



I'm rollercoastering today, and I… Continue

I only say "was horrible" because I don't know if "s*cked" will get through the filter.



It's four weeks ago today that Dan died. I spent this morning again watching the clock and reliving the last day with him, and fell into depression around 9:30 after he was "gone" and all I had to remember was making phone calls and trying to figure out what I was supposed to do with the rest of my life.



I managed to shake that off for a little while - I don't know if it's avoidance or… Continue

"John Bowlby, a noted psychiatrist, outlined the ebb and flow of processes such as shock and numbness, yearning and searching, disorganization and despair, and reorganization." - Wikipedia.org



I'm going to need to learn more about this model of grief, because the more reading I'm doing, the more I'm seeing consensus that the Kübler-Ross model (which was based on people facing death rather than on those who survived the death of a loved one) isn't always the best roadmap for dealing… Continue

I took a full pill last night and slept like a rock, for which I'm grateful. I woke up in a much better mood and got a little bit of cleaning done. Today was the first meeting of the Widowed Persons Support Group, and even though today was basically a "Hi, my name is..." session, I'm hopeful that it will be helpful. I bawled in the car afterwards before I started driving - my first serious cry of the day. Considering that it's Valentine's Day, I think that's pretty good.



One of my… Continue

This was not a good day. I slept miserably because I thought "I'll try to sleep without a pill" and as a result I was up every hour or so. This morning was the first time that I think I seriously considered suicide, to the point of looking stuff up online and thinking about what I had around the house, whether we had any bullets for the revolver, the realization that was too messy, but wait - there's a whole bottle of his hydrocodone in the medicine cabinet and wouldn't that be appropriate?… Continue

Things are hitting me when I least expect it. Tonight I was watching the Olympic Opening Ceremonies, and one of the songs they played was Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah". That song is in the soundtrack for "Watchmen" which was a graphic novel that Dan really liked and he liked the movie, as well. So when they started playing the song I thought I was going to lose it.



Then later in the evening I was watching something else (since I spent the day in bed with the laptop and the television)… Continue

We had a huge snowstorm here yesterday and our power went out around midnight. I was still awake because my sleep schedules are totally messed up, and when the power went out, I freaked. My first thought was "Dan's not here, what am I supposed to do??" even though I know darn well what to do. But my mind went to complete mush. I ended up calling my mom and asking her what I was supposed to do, did it, then spent the next hour and a half beating myself to a mental bloody pulp because I was such… Continue

My horoscope for today is a day behind.



"Your horoscope for February 11, 2010: Sometimes the only way to beat the blues is to indulge yourself, Chris. Rather than trying to be strong and brave and keep up your good cheer, why not give in to your melancholy, just for a little while? You could spend the day in bed, the blankets pulled up tight to your chin, or opt to soak in the bathtub. You might find that one day of wallowing is all that you really need. Before you know it, you'll be… Continue

Tonight I'm wallowing. I acknowledge it, does that make it okay? If it's a conscious choice is it a bad thing? I feel like I've disappointed people tonight, even though I know intellectually that I didn't. But that doesn't stop me from beating up on myself for it for a while.



This is the sort of thing that I would have talked to Dan about and he would have helped keep me from chasing it around in my head and driving myself nuts with it. I guess I'll have to figure out how to shake it… Continue

Three weeks ago I was happily married. Three weeks ago I wasn't a widow. Three weeks ago we had gone out to lunch and spent time talking. Three weeks ago we did laundry. Three weeks ago I went in to him where he was sitting at the computer and did a saucy wiggle before I headed out to dance class. Three weeks ago he told me he adored me and he loved me. Three weeks ago I came home and sat on my computer next to him and surfed while he played a video game. Three weeks ago he kissed me before… Continue

Yay me. If you don't count the fact that I didn't get out of bed until nearly noon so I wouldn't have to face the day, that is. I don't even remember what I did this morning. I took the dogs to the park around 1pm because they were exploding with energy and it was a way to get out of the house. The park was weird because I kept hearing myself say "we" when someone asked me about the dogs, and of course I was including Dan in talking about how we adopted them and how we named them and every time… Continue

I dreamed about him again last night. That's two nights in a row that I'm aware of and remember. Last night I think it was more about him being him instead of him representing the missing part of me. I don't remember much of the dream, I just remember being on the bed, watching him get dressed, like I did a thousand times when he was alive. And I knew that he was dead, because I had that sense of heartlonging loss as I watched him, knowing that even though it was something we had done thousands… Continue

If I close my eyes forever,

Would it all remain unchanged?

If I close my eyes forever,

Would it all remain the same?



I don't know what's wrong with me. Is it shock? Is it denial? I don't know. It's almost like "pretending the last 17 years didn't happen" is better than dealing with the pain of remembering that he's gone. It's like the feeling I get when I go back to work after a two-week vacation. Work is so normal and familiar that it's like the vacation never… Continue

I lost it at work today. For some reason I heard his voice telling me to stop chewing my lip (a bad habit he'd been trying to break me of for some time) and I completely lost it. Went into the bathroom at work and cried, trying not to be too loud because there was someone else in the bathroom. Freaking miserable.



Later that day I was going through my wallet for something and I found the card from the anniversary flowers he sent me last September, telling me that it's only been three… Continue