It may come as a bit of a shock to you (and to me, too) that I’m still capable of having a pretty great Wednesday, but that’s what happened. I’m still digesting what lessons to take from the past couple of days—that’s a continual process for me.
I had resolved to not waste my continued good mood from my massage on Tuesday by letting Wednesday steal it away from me, so I was intentional about naming and identifying awful feelings as they arose yesterday. I did a lot of work and was all caught up, so I decided to capitalize on my good mood by taking an impromptu trip to Buffalo, NY to see our friend Corey and eat a local delicacy. (No, not chicken wings.)
I don’t know if you’ve heard of beef on weck, but it’s a thing. It’s similar to a French dip, but on a specific type of bun with caraway seeds and sea salt. It’s also delicious. I’d never tried pickled beets before, and found those to also be delightful.
We had an awesome time together. Having the flexibility to bring Ashley the dog-sitter over for a random evening so I can impulsively drive a couple hours and a couple states over for a really good sandwich is just another part of this bizarre new life I find myself in. It might sound like a weird thing to do, but it felt perfectly appropriate at the time, and I’m very glad I did it.
I made it through my Wednesday afternoon, during the drive, reflecting on the day that Kellie died and on how I felt that day, along with all the things I’ve experienced and all the ways I’ve grown (or, if not grown, changed) since April. I don’t feel like the same person I was before that day, and I don’t know that I’ll ever feel like that version of Matt again.
I’ve resisted the idea that two people died at that point, old Matt and Kellie, because I hate to think that I’ve lost something permanent other than having lost Kellie. It’s felt to me like such a hopeless thing to say that I’m forever changed, but I’m starting to warm up to that idea.
I hate to accept that something else was taken from me without my permission.
I’ve been worried about this morning’s appointment for about four months. I had a doctor’s appointment in Cleveland, and I had opted not to tell my doctor when she died because I didn’t feel the need to seek out medication to help me sleep better or whatever. As the months have dragged on, I’ve built it up into an ever bigger issue that I never told him it had happened, and that today I was going to have to go through the whole story with him about everything that’s happened since we last met in late March.
Eventually, I decided to send him a message late last night so he could have some time to process the fact that she’d died in a traumatic and very sudden way without me having to tell him that and react to his reaction in real-time. I felt very proud of myself for being (a little bit) proactive, until I arrived at my appointment to find that he hadn’t read the message yet, so I had to tell him everything in one go anyhow.
I made it through. It was oddly cathartic to tell the story from the start, how I felt back then, the role writing has played in my life, about the changes in my routine and how the dogs are doing, along with how my support system has been holding and seeing and being there for me. It was a LOT to go through in a half hour, but I made it through. It gave me a lot to reflect on for the rest of the day, though that’s not a bad thing at all.
It’s been such a huge series of things to absorb, and it’s more than a little overwhelming to me to consider it in its totality. At one point, he asked when I’d gone back to work, and I said it had been about two or two and a half weeks afterward. He thought I was telling him that I had taken four months off work and just gone back two weeks AGO, and was more than a little shocked that I was back to seeing counseling clients and teaching classes within two or three weeks of losing my wife.
That’s something I haven’t thought about in months, but I really think that going back to work as quickly as I did was something I needed to do in order to preserve just the tiniest shred of normalcy I could get. I’ve seen people say they take a full year off work, and I can’t imagine what I would have done with myself and my brain for a year without work to keep me busy-ish. That would not have been the right path for me to take, regardless of the financial hole that would have dug for me.
I’m so grateful that I have jobs that allow me to lose myself in other people’s education and mental health challenges and not focus upon myself and my grief and sorrow for a few hours at a time. My doctor asked how my focus and energy level have been, and yeah—they’ve both been awful. But I expected that to be the case, and neither of those are unusual for someone in my situation. The fact that I’ve continued to function as well as I have in those situations is miraculous. And no, I’m not my old self. I don’t have the same capacity or ability to work endless hours on solving one huge issue. Sometimes I feel like my brain doesn’t even belong to me anymore, when the waves of sadness hit. I cried at four or five random things this morning alone, for no real reason I could put my finger on.
But even though I often feel alien to myself, I’m still trying to live my life. I’m eating some fantastic sandwiches (including an incredible turkey sandwich from Herb & Twine after my appointment). I’m playing with the dogs. I’m reading (or trying to read). I’m playing video games again. I’m listening to tons of new music. I’m talking to some old friends and making deeper connections with some newer friends. I’m writing an awful lot.
I’m determined to make this life sustainable and full of joy and peace and hope. Some days, I can see those things just over the horizon, barely almost within reach. On the days when it doesn’t feel possible to climb over the massive mountain of my feelings, I try to sit and gather myself for a while until I feel ready to shoulder the burden all over again.
I’m not trying to present an artificially sunny version of where I’m at. It’s awfully dark in here sometimes. I’m committed to telling people when it’s especially hard.
These last three days have contained so much more good than bad. I’m committed to telling people when that happens too, instead of being married to my sadness. I’m in love with Kellie, but most definitely not in love with my grief. I’ll always miss her, and will never feel that it’s “for the best” that she’s dead. It’s never going to be that. But I am now moving into a place of thinking about mid-range and longer-term goals, not in daily survival mode. That’s a really important transition, and I’m grateful for it as well.
XOXO,
Matt