Exhausted and Speechless

I had a really great idea for tonight’s post all planned out. You should’ve seen it, it would have been incredible. But I just can’t finish writing it. I don’t have it in me.

Grief means exhaustion, too. And tonight as I sit here in the chair that Kellie was so happy to have delivered just six days before she died, I am completely and totally exhausted.

I woke up feeling pretty numb this morning. That’s a new one for me, as I haven’t been in that place since the day it happened. I think it’s likely that making it through the milestone of two weeks did something to break my heart in a new and creative way. Regardless, it took me a few hours to start feeling like myself.

We drove my dad’s rental car back and dropped it off at the airport and then grabbed lunch to bring back home so I could eat before seeing a few of my counseling clients. Those sessions went really well. Over the past two days, I think I’ve started to gain an understanding and profound understanding of some of the ways that counseling helps me get out of my own head and inhabit someone else’s world for an hour. Holding space for a client is not impossible, as I had feared. It does take a lot more emotional energy from me than it used to, but my capacity is decreased in a whole host of areas and so that doesn’t surprise me at all. I finished up the day utterly depleted on an emotional level. Happy that I haven’t lost my ability to provide good clinical care, but very very tired.

Before Kellie died, I was so excited to celebrate the newest group of my students (now my colleagues) who graduated from my BSW program tonight. But I didn’t have it in me (recurrent theme there) to attend tonight’s commencement ceremony. My dad and I waited for over an hour to watch it as it happened on the school’s YouTube page, but the live stream had glitched out and never loaded. I was a bit bummed to have missed one of the speeches in particular. One of the year’s Student Commencement Addresses was going to be given by a BSW graduate, and I had been so proud of her and eager to see what she had to say.

But then I got a text from a friend and faculty member who’d been there tonight. She said, “She did a great job. Beautiful tribute to Kellie too. :)”

I couldn’t believe that this student had dedicated part of her speech to Kellie’s memory—it was a complete surprise—but that’s exactly what she did.

I’m really, really emotional right now. Please watch. And Nikole, if you’re reading this, thank you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?si=-Y1NMlqJVyzRSRqY&t=1425

Talk to you soon,

Matt