What Am I Doing?

What am I doing?  Seriously.  What?

That has been my question all day.  Maybe for the past couple days.

I find myself in some realm of dissociated self.  I narrate things from inside my head (usually a habit I reserve for very drunk nights at the bar) talking about myself in the third person.  I recognize this shit.  It is “Survival Mechanisms 101.” 

As a mental health clinician, I know things.  Or I am supposed to know them.  I know how grief cycles back around and comes in waves.  I know how it can be triggered by special dates and anniversaries.  I figured I would give myself the one year death anniversary off from work and without solid plans so I could just feel however I needed to feel.  I knew it would be hard.  I had no idea how hard.  At work today, I honestly felt like I needed to go home.  I felt crazy.  Crazier than the calls I was taking (and, no, crazy is not the politically correct way to talk about my line of work, but this is my blog and it does not have to be politically correct).  It was all I could do not to shatter something, beat my fist against the second story window, scream, sob, or gouge my arm with a paperclip.  I wanted to leave early, but that didn't happen. 

At least I have tomorrow.  Thank God I have tomorrow.

I did not anticipate it being this bad.  This is the part where knowing things, as a clinician, is not at all the same as experiencing them.  It’s the part where sometimes our clients really are telling us the truth when they say that if we have not gone through the experience, we cannot even begin to know.  And of course everyone’s experience is different, so we cannot begin to know their experience even if we have gone through a similar one ourselves.  The point being, you have to take a person’s word for it when they are telling you how they feel and telling you that you cannot possibly know.  They are probably right.

I find that it is all kicked up fresh.  All this grief.  For the past week or so . . . well, really since Ron’s birthday, I have been time warping back to a year ago.  What were Ron and I doing a year ago?  How did I not realize his life was coming to an end?  I mean, I knew he was terminal, but I never put it together that he was really dying, like, right then.  Even on this night a year ago, even after the hospice nurse had come out to the house and listened to his heart and told him it was slowing down and that he maybe had a few days left . . . even then, when I asked him if he thought he was dying and he told me ‘no’ I believed him.

Time warping back.  Ron's Last Moments.  Rereading that post just now was incredible – so glad I wrote it while it was all new in my memory bank.  I have honored some of those final days.  Dustin and Carrie and I repeated the last dog walk Ron took, this time pushing Evy Jo in a baby stroller instead of Ron in the wheelchair along the Kalamazoo River in Battle Creek.  I weeded out his vegetable beds last night, just as I did a year ago while he watched and talked to me for as long as his body would tolerate sitting up. 

But tonight.  What to do tonight?  I have so much anxiety.  There is not a concrete thing to occupy me.  A year ago, after Ron told his hospice nurse that he wasn't dying, I got him out of bed and to the bathroom and out to the porch for what would be his last ever cigarette.  I brought him the foods he requested – Chef Boyardee raviolis and rainbow sherbet to go along with the plethora of Lik-M-Aid and Little Debbie snack cakes he had at bed side – and he picked out shows for us to watch on Netflix.  I remember numbly sitting through Mike Rowe on Dirty Jobs (season 5, episode 6: Spider Pharm) as he learned to milk poisonous spider venom.  I couldn't concentrate on the show.  My mind was racing, juxtaposed thoughts about what the nurse said and what Ron said.  Who was right?  He had always fought with the medical professionals about his life expectancy and, up until that night, he won.  I also remember that we watched the third to last ever episode of House, M.D.  I would watch the final two episodes without him.  One of the things that really killed Ron when he was dying was knowing he would not get to see how a tv series ended or a movie in production about a comic book  storyline he was really into.  I hate seeing how these things end now, even when I pretend he is seeing with my eyes and watching with me.

So, since I left work, I have not been able to figure out what to do with myself.  I skipped roller derby practice because I just don’t have it in me tonight.  I don’t want to see or talk to anyone.  I can’t seem to do anything except cry and everyone knows there’s no crying in derby. 

Along those same lines, if you are texting or emailing or calling me and I am not responding, that is why.  I just don’t feel like communicating directly with anyone.

And yet, I can blog, and actually find this therapeutic.  I can post to Facebook.  I can take pictures and share them.  Somehow, words and photos are my way of processing.  Sharing them is my way of expressing where I am at.  Your responses are the support I need without having to actually have that direct contact.  In some ways, I say it is a messed up world we live in where rather than have real human interaction, we can hide behind our light-up screens and keyboards.  In other ways, I say thank goodness for technology that allows those of us who are emotionally/socially crippled or wounded to reach out, express, emote, and receive support.  In my head, I come up with sociology and psychology theses to be written about this socially networked world we live in.

But again, this is just more detaching, me going off on a tangent about our technologically advanced, socially crippled society.  Refocus. 

I keep telling myself Ron would want me to do “whatever I need to do to heal my heart.”  Those are his words, actually.  I didn't want to write heal, because yes, I admit it, parts of me are still not ready to heal.  I wanted to write “whatever I need to do to feel and experience this anniversary time however I need to.”  I imagine this means a lot of dark stuff for me to do and go through.  But the Ron voice in my head wants me to heal. 

Trouble is, I don’t know what to do to make that happen. 

I went for my dog walk like usual.  I saw my neighbor Margaret out watering her roses so we stopped and I talked to her for the first time in months.  She has been on my mind for many weeks now and I have been meaning to call her, but just haven’t gotten around to it.  I told her tomorrow marks the one year death anniversary, which I acknowledged means that for her in two weeks it will be one year since she lost her husband Earl to cancer.  I held her hand for about a solid two minutes.  It was cool from holding the garden hose and her skin was soft and paper thin.  It seemed like the only real thing that I encountered in my whole day of narration – this tangible hand belonging to my kind neighbor, one of at least three of us widows on my road.  Her hand grounded me for a moment.  Margaret has been such a beacon of strength and hope and grace through her widowhood, but tonight she seemed down.  She said she was tired.  We both agreed that we have been doing well, up until now.  This anniversary thing seems to drag us down.  Neither of us can believe it has been a year already.

I cannot believe it has been a year.  I cannot.  So much has happened and yet it seems like I was just with Ron, just talking to him yesterday. 

In a way, I was.  I am always talking to Ron.  I talk to him aloud.  I still reach over and touch where he would sit in the passenger seat when I see or hear or think about something particularly beautiful.  I write to him.  And, not always, but sometimes when I am getting ready to fall asleep, I keep my eyes open in the dark and whisper to him like he is next to me.  I can almost create the feeling that he is really there.  Last night, in particular, it seemed so real.  I could feel him rubbing my sore back while I drifted off and I told him not stop until I was completely out.  He didn't.

Yes, I am that completely deranged person who is carrying on a relationship with a ghost.  I don’t care.  I still have so much love in my life because of Ron. 

And yet . . . he really is gone.  His family and I often talk about how the phone is the worst.  Not being able to just call him up when we want to.  Not being able to hear his voice.  Today, when I walked downtown on my lunch hour to get some food, I wanted to call him and burst into tears at how hard a time I was having holding it together at my job.  He was always the greatest support and when I would call him with stuff like this.  He knew just what to say to make me feel better.  Now, I can’t call him.  How real is that shit?  It is really real and it really sucks. 

A year ago on this night, hours before Ron lost consciousness, we started watching Darjeeling Limited.  I think tonight I will try watching it for the first time since then.  Because I don’t know what else to do right now . . .