Happy Thanksgiving

My thanksgiving was a gut-ripping, horrifying low of howling emptiness. I cried, I cried until my stomach hurt, ready to wretch. I got in the shower and howled like a wounded animal. I yelled and ended up balled up in a heap in the bathtub. Poor K and to come in and see me like that. I knew it broke his heart. But I wanted to die.  My body is still sore from everything I put it through yesterday.

Today I cannot interact with people. I've stayed away from facebook and have generally realized that I cannot go more than an inch below my emotional surface with anyone.  And now, back with my therapist, a good move.

I am barely functional outside the clasroom. I can pull it together long enough, but it exhausts all my reserves so that by the time I get home I am back to the numb or crying version of me that I have become.

I really thought I was making progress on my grief, then the furniture arrived, the house closed, checks arrived, and Thanksgiving hit.  Truth is, I made it, but Thanksgiving took a huge chunk of flesh out of me. I felt like I had been bitten by a great white shark and was just lying there, bleeding, waiting to die.

Today, in solitude, was helpful. I stayed above the emotional fray, watched Robin Hood with Russell Crowe, cuddled with the cats...I almost feel peaceful. It's such a thin strata I walk, like a gossamer stream that gets me from place to place.

I wonder and worry how my sister fared. My aunt was busy cooking for her family. That was her therapy. We none of us wanted this Thanksgiving to come, and we are all fearing Christmas. If Thanksgiving was hard...I shudder to think what might happen, what I might feel....Thanksgiving hit me unexpected, honestly. The furniture had come, all the other steps of the estate being made...and the night before Thanksgiving I had the most beautiful dream. So beautiful it is indescribable beyond that it involved a fantasty-sort of experience, with me trying on one gorgeous dress after another, choosing them for some unbeknownst event. It was such a happy, peace, simple dream. Morpheus must have sent it to ease the pain upon waking.

I put some of my father's things away last night, after looking at them, touching them, reading them, remembering them. They are not far out of reach, but they are put out of sight, where treasured things belong. There's a lot more to be done, but a start has been made.

It is official. I have cracked open. I don't know what is next, this holiday season. I don't know to whom I can cling. I know there will be clinging needed if Thanksgiving is any indication.  I have this weekend to myself and my husband. And work to do to prepare for Monday. Emotional work so that my answer to the inevitable polite question, "How was your Thanksgiving?" can be a bland, "Fine. Tell me about yours."  I can't blame the world for enjoying theirs, and I hope someday to enjoy mine again, too. But this year, like all the firsts, I just wish it to go away.

A friend asked what I was doing for my birthday this year, and I said "nothing." Which is true. It's my longest teaching day, anyway, and I don't feel like celebrating anything.

There are things to clear up, now, that the majority of the estate work is done. Now I can move on with my own emotional work. A lot of it was put aside to make sure I could stay focused on details, school work, and keeping up the facade that I am the strong one. In my drinking days, I could have numbed the pain every night after work with a good bottle of wine. Now instead, I fall asleep, (if I fall asleep) feeling ripped up inside, wondering how to make everything right--school, home, friends, family. I am so out of whack that I barely know myself anymore. And I trust even fewer people to see that.  So I isolate as my way of protecting myself, steeling myself for the next public appearance of the person I was.