- Not wanting to get out of bed
- Watching television sounds like too much effort
- A grey, suffocating fog rolling in on really tough days
- Sobbing in your car because it’s the only time you’re truly alone and no one can hear you
- Basically pushing your husband out of the house and you’re not really sure why
- Only to have physical grief rip through you with a vengeance out of nowhere
- Sounding like a wounded animal that had been shot
- Throwing up
- Sobbing on the bathroom floor
- Having to tell your spouse you aren’t sick and that horrifying realization that it’s grief becoming physical
- Not wanting to talk about it
- Because who the hell can understand this?
- It’s not being able to function at work
- Losing time
- Inability to focus
- Not being able to say you miss them out loud because that makes it too real
- And if you don’t shut your mouth right this second you think you’re never going to be able to stop screaming
- Cleaning out a room or a house and being overwhelmed
- Realizing there is no one you can ask these thousands of questions to
- Being angry at the person who left you
- Being angry at the mess they left
- Being angry
- Getting set off by the smallest things
- Eventually realizing this anger is yours
- You are also grieving the old you
- The you before the terrible things happened
- Grieving the past, present, and future all at the same time
- Feeling like you have nothing left to lose
- “It would be okay if I didn’t wake up tomorrow”
- Not knowing if you are strong enough to seek help
- Making that phone call to sign up for a grief group
- Being terrified of said grief group
- Thinking you are “cursed” and everyone you ever lose will leave you too soon
- Crying yourself to sleep
- Crying in your sleep
- Nightmares
- Not sleeping
- Sleeping too much
- Losing weight
- Gaining weight
- Wondering if you are going crazy
- Thinking no one else out there is having the exact same thoughts you are
- Avoiding places you used to go
- Avoiding people you love
- Not picking up the phone
- Listening to the voicemails on your phone that you saved because you knew this day was coming too soon
- Listen to the voicemail you saved just in case because you didn’t think it was going to happen for a really long time
- Being terrified of your own mortality
- Not looking forward to anything
- Promising yourself you’ll do just one productive thing today
- I swear
- No, really I’ll do it tomorrow
- Being disappointed in yourself for not being better at this
- Not giving yourself any slack
- Not giving yourself any grace
- Being mad at yourself for being angry
- Wondering what the hell you have to hope for
- Realizing anyone who has been on a video meeting with you can see your urn shelf in your office
- Getting real fucking mad you even have an urn shelf
- Shouldering other people’s pain and not giving yourself time to shoulder your own
- Mowing the lawn in the dark
- Non-stop cleaning
- Feeling like you bring everyone down because you look like them or talk like them or you were basically two people formed into one
- Shutting down
- Scenes playing on loop in your head
- Wishing you had done something different
- Re-reading the note you wrote to yourself because you knew you would do this to yourself. Again
- Telling them they are assholes for leaving you one night after grief group
- Chest pain
- Migraines
- Crying at a Dave Matthews concert because they should fucking be there with you
- Crying when the record shows up you would’ve gotten them as a present
- Not allowing yourself to look at their picture for too long because that brings a different kind of sadness
- Watching a show and making yourself sad because “they would have loved this” or my favorite, “Let me call and tell them…”
- Just to realize you can’t
- Ever
- Wanting to do everything alone
- Feeling like running away to a cabin in the woods somewhere
- Waking up, getting through today, just to lay in bed and go to sleep because you don’t want to be awake anymore
- Thinking you don’t deserve anything great in this world
- Because you have been burned too many times
- Finally realizing you’re going to hurt no matter what you do, so go do the thing or get the thing or whatever it is you want
- You’re living not just for you, but for the people you lost
- The people who stuck around are the true people you needed all along
- Nothing will ever be as hard as reading those god damn eulogies so you got this
- Not taking shit from anyone because you could be dead by 55
- Laughing louder
- Hitting your “grief button” when you need to because there are just some days you aren’t strong enough
- And that’s okay
- You’ll be okay