There’s something about loss that makes a person endlessly weary.
Well, probably a bunch of things. I think that pretty early on, the sheer physical toll that all the crying took on my body contributed to tiring me out. The changes to my sleep pattern did as well. I told someone yesterday that I practice intuitive eating now, but for sleep (I go to bed when my body wants me to, and then wake up when my body tells me it’s time). And that works a lot better for me now than it did a few months ago, without a doubt.
It’s funny, for years before Kellie died I had a problem with revenge sleep procrastination, on and off. If you haven’t heard about that, it’s this thing where you feel so overly-busy during the day that you unconsciously put off going to bed in order to push back against the need to sleep. Kellie always needed a lot more sleep than me, but we were never one of those couples who were okay with having separate bedtimes. When I was up late, so was she (until she fell asleep and I had to wake her up to go bed, at least). I’d wake up in the morning with an alarm, and then wake her up as well. So it was my body that dictated how late we stayed up and what time we got up in the morning, which doesn’t feel very fair to me, looking back from this vantage point.
I didn’t want to stay up, necessarily. I didn’t particularly want to do anything important or fun, it was just that my brain wasn’t switching off until super late. On the weekends, or when we took vacation time, I might even keep us up until three or four in the morning, which is pretty ridiculous for grown adults.
Now that it’s just me, I could actually stay up exactly as long as I want to and not have to feel guilty for doing it—and yet I usually head to bed hours before Kellie and I would have. And you also know that I wake up on my own, several hours before Kellie and I would have. The only times I need to use an alarm are when I need to drive a long way for an early meeting or something and want to be positive not to oversleep (even though I haven’t slept through an appointment for several years, it’s embarrassing enough to not want to replicate).
All of that is to say that my sleep patterns are a hundred percent healthier than they were before Kellie died, and that Kellie would have loved this. Especially going to bed at a reasonable time. And the naps—she loved naps, and I almost never agreed to take one. But now? At least a few every week, though I don’t take one or two per day like some people I know.
Someone suggested to me that they thought it was natural age-related changes in my sleep habits, but I strongly doubt it. Otherwise it wouldn’t have perfectly lined up with her death.
I’m not pushing back against any of this anymore. I like going to bed when I’m tired, and I love waking up early every morning. That’s all fine.
I just wish I didn’t get so wiped out every day. Maybe as time goes by and I am less-viscerally affected by the loss of Kellie, my body will want me to go back to staying up to an absurd degree. But I don’t think so. This feels like another one of those changes that’s happened to me and that won’t ever go back to my previous normal.
I’m not spending hours crying every day, so those physical aspects aren’t still tiring me out to the same degree. It’s an emotional thing that is translated over into my physical body, and it’s still really hard for me to adjust to.
This is a pretty common thing for widow/ers to experience, and I see plenty of folks talking about it online. It’s hard for me to articulate to you just how much more rest I need than before, and also how much more rest I’m getting than before. But it’s never enough.
I walked into our bedroom for a second to grab something this evening, and since the blinds were closed and only one lamp was on, the room was a lot darker than usual. And in the shadows, I could only see our bed out of the corner of my eye. For a second, I thought Kellie was lying there asleep. It’s scary how easy it was for me to believe that was true. Of course she wasn’t peacefully resting in our bed. I don’t honestly believe she visited me in some way, and I wasn’t creeped out about it either. It was just like a glimpse into that other hypothetical dimension where she never died back in April and was still here, just fine, taking a nap.
Even though it’s been a few hours, I’m still not sure how I feel about it. I don’t have to put a label on that feeling, I know I don’t. I guess I’m more happy for it than not, I just wish it happened more often. I’d love to see her out of the corner of my eye all day long, but that hasn’t come to pass.
Wanting a thing doesn’t make it happen, as I have sure had to learn the hard way.
Love ya,
Matt