Waiting to feel it.
To be honest, I’m feeling a little less-than-functional today. I know I’ve been riding pretty hard the last few weeks, but this last week was really just non-stop stressors, and it’s left me feeling pretty hollow inside. I think the real crux of it was last night, when my mom’s group went to the vigil for those US Transgender people who lost their lives to violence this year. The table ofrenda stretched the entire length of the room, with photos and memories of the people who died. People were crying, hugging, remembering those they’ve lost…and here I was, just sitting there feeling completely numb.
It’s not that I didn’t care - of COURSE I did, I was the one that organized our whole group going there to honor them and support our LGBTQ+ community, but usually doing things like this helps me get a sense of fulfillment and purpose, and this time it just felt like I was one of those worn out stubs of eraser at the end of an overused pencil - you could see it was there, but good luck getting it to work like it used to, you know? To top it off, I left the event with their battery-operated candle still in my purse, so I had to call up the center and figure out where to return it today.
Coming home last night, I got in a long discussion with my husband about why I couldn’t feel the grief, despite it being all around me. Or maybe BECAUSE it was all around me? Maybe it’s because I’ve been watching my dad slowly waste away, so in a way I’ve been having the worst kind of grieving for months now - the kind where you grieve a person that’s still there, just not in the capacity you once knew them. Or maybe it’s just my old dysfunctional coping mechanism of shutting down when it’s all feeling like too much for one person to handle.
Anyway, after the talk, I woke up a few times in the night with nightmares (mostly stress dreams, nothing too graphic), and just couldn’t seem to get a solid few hours in for anything. So today, I’m getting through work the best I can, one task at a time, but also wishing I could just walk out the door and not come back to this office again. Even when doing the “fun stuff” I usually enjoy. Is it depression? Probably. Will it pass soon? God, I hope so. Whether it’s a good laugh or a good cry, or a little of both, something different needs to happen soon.
It’s not that I didn’t care - of COURSE I did, I was the one that organized our whole group going there to honor them and support our LGBTQ+ community, but usually doing things like this helps me get a sense of fulfillment and purpose, and this time it just felt like I was one of those worn out stubs of eraser at the end of an overused pencil - you could see it was there, but good luck getting it to work like it used to, you know? To top it off, I left the event with their battery-operated candle still in my purse, so I had to call up the center and figure out where to return it today.
Coming home last night, I got in a long discussion with my husband about why I couldn’t feel the grief, despite it being all around me. Or maybe BECAUSE it was all around me? Maybe it’s because I’ve been watching my dad slowly waste away, so in a way I’ve been having the worst kind of grieving for months now - the kind where you grieve a person that’s still there, just not in the capacity you once knew them. Or maybe it’s just my old dysfunctional coping mechanism of shutting down when it’s all feeling like too much for one person to handle.
Anyway, after the talk, I woke up a few times in the night with nightmares (mostly stress dreams, nothing too graphic), and just couldn’t seem to get a solid few hours in for anything. So today, I’m getting through work the best I can, one task at a time, but also wishing I could just walk out the door and not come back to this office again. Even when doing the “fun stuff” I usually enjoy. Is it depression? Probably. Will it pass soon? God, I hope so. Whether it’s a good laugh or a good cry, or a little of both, something different needs to happen soon.