18 months on .... why does it feel like a lifetime and only yesterday?

 


So today (28th July 2022) marks 18 months into this grief journey. 

I have been having more good days than bad but today the grief monster arrived and stayed for breakfast, lunch and tea! 

18 months - I thought I would be so much further on than I am. But, I don't know why other than before this I believed that grief was a linear process that I just had to get through ... and after 18 months I would be well through it and nearly at the other side. How little I knew! 

I have spent some of the day beating myself up for not being further along. 

I have spent some of the day beating myself up for feeling sorry for myself.

I have spent some of the day beating myself up for for letting him down. 

I have spent most of the day in tears.

I have spent most of the day feeling the pain deep, deep inside. 

I think it's beginning to sink in. 

The thought of FUTURE is now beginning to dawn. For so long, I could just about live in the here and now - future could be later today, later in the week that's about all I could real handle. 

But now, the brain fog is beginning to clear, I can see a haze of some kind of future ahead of me. I need to shape and create a life for myself. I have a future (how ever much I didn't want one in the early days)! 

What do I want my lifetime to be? I have no idea. I did know. We had a clear plan. But I don't fit that plan anymore. I don't fit that life. 

It feels like only yesterday I knew what I wanted and what I was doing. And yet it's a lifetime that I have be feeling my way through this dark corridor of grief. 

If you had said to me in the early days at how I would feel at the 18 months point- I think that I would have thought that I would be far more sorted that I am. I would have expected that I would know what I am doing- have a plan and working it. That's what I did, before all this. 

But I am not that girl any more. 

I know that I need to be a bit kinder to myself. I need to cut myself a bit of slack, because I  am not that girl any more. I need to relearn who I am and what life holds for me. 

I feel a bit like a caterpillar- a rather chubby caterpillar (I have discovered that eating everything is not therapy- That's a whole other post!) 

I feel as though I am building my chrysalis and will need to be a bit dormant for a while before I emerge.  

Yep, I am definitely in the chrysalis- stage!  

Awaiting metamorphosis - the expectation is that butterflies emerge all beautiful and changed whereas in actual-ality they come out wet and tired before they dry out and are strong enough to fly!  

 with love

Hx

AKA the chubby caterpillar

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