(no subject)

[seryn]

Yeah. Things aren't going well.

Pretty much I'm completely conscious of the fact that I'm much better off without my dead husband. He was pulling me under while he was dying and self-oblivious to that fact. Right now *all* of my external problems are under control or resolved. No one has been adding things I cannot handle even if the day-to-day stuff is irritating.

I made progress on my day-to-day stuff by getting a boost from a friend and this allowed me to overcome the inertia that made it seem insoluble.

But where I am now is that *this is all there is*.

I'm looking around me and seeing the lives that people I know have made for themselves; I don't want what they have. The major things that make other people content would actually make me unhappy. Some of the people I know are physically suffering and more determined than I am.

So, there's nothing I want that I can see anyone else having (I would like if someone truly loved me and was emotionally healthy enough not to let me sabotage myself and ruin the relationship--- but I don't see that ANYWHERE. It sure as hell didn't exist in my marriage.) but what there is, is not enough. This is all there is and it's not enough.

From here all that can happen is that I will continue my pallid existence until I am old.

Comments

[thistleingrey]

That is how life is for many people, I gather, except that most of them don't have the massive introspection that you've been undertaking.

I don't find that fact depressing, btw. It is what it is.

I think I'm able to continue on with my little determinednesses because I don't look for things to be happy or expect happiness to come to me--which means I'm pleasantly surprised when little things occur; for me that's enough of an occasional up. But I don't really know how I got that way, as it were, though I can see that my mother (who's had a much harder life than mine has been so far) has a similar outlook. I dunno.

[seryn]

I don't want another 40 years of this.

Your perspective is useful because I have been feeling greedy, like I shouldn't be unhappy with what I have.

[corrvin]

It's okay to be unhappy.

But also, grieving-- which is normal and natural, and what you have been doing-- takes time. You don't have that much time left over from grieving to find things that you like. So maybe later things might improve if you have a chance to find fulfilling things.

[thistleingrey]

Agreed. Also, I don't see anything currently (though admittedly what one sees here is limited by definition!) that suggests that there'd be "another 40 years" of how things are now.

[seryn]

It feels like nothing will ever change except for the worse. That this is as good as it gets. If I had any sense that this was the low, rather than the high point, I could probably endure without so much whining.

[thistleingrey]

Makes sense for grieving, too, however. The problem with grief is that you can't know how things look otherwise till you're past midpoint, and you can't know where midpoint falls. From the outside, the half-life of this kind of thing rarely lasts for a long time (and it's not like it's a tidy inverse bell curve--that'd be too easy, no?). Even when it doesn't seem that the cloud pertains specifically to your dead spouse, it'll shade things for a little while. :/

[seryn]

A friend recently said that things in one's life need to stabilize before grief even begins. I'm just barely starting any grieving. I was ridiculously angry at him and relieved when things stopped getting worse. Now I'm in this weird place because I'm not on this non-express elevator to hell anymore. (Seriously, I don't know what I was thinking. If you're on an elevator descending to hell, it stops one or two stories down and I get off, how stupid do I have to be to get back on just because the doors are still open? Why would I think it's going to go back up? And... I did that *over and over*. I told myself that the stairway doors were alarmed, so there was no choice, but it feels idiotic now.)

I'm grieving for the life I thought I had. The one that *everyone* knew didn't exist. Even I was unhappy and questioning my reality. But I *miss* it. And there's this sense of never being able to trust anything good. Like having this much failure has ruined me for any optimism ever again. Even if things felt better, I'd poke at them until they died from the wounds. Then I'd feel smugly satisfied in my distrust.

[thistleingrey]

Makes sense--seems hard to pinpoint where grief starts. And grieving for a version of yourself definitely makes sense to me, FWIW.

[seryn]

I think there's a lot of apathy too, which is flavored by everything that happened. Pretty much I don't like anything, new or old, so I don't feel like doing anything, so it feels like nothing can ever improve. It feels like my life will continue on like it is now and not killing myself now is just throwing good after bad.

The most effective anti-depressant rule I've ever found is to believe that suicide can wait. "You can always kill yourself tomorrow, there's no hurry." So it's been a particularly trying time lately.