Personal Journal

seven squared

I feel like I'm writing in this journal way too much.

I told Sandra about my out of body last Friday. She said it's very common for the blow to start hitting at the 6th week, which was that day. It's 7 today. I was driving home and I did the math. Forty-nine days, Jean's been dead. Blows me away, because it seems like 7 days.

Sandra was pretty frank about how hard this is going to hit me, and I'm just now beginning to feel it. Yeah, and I know, this is just the beginning. I'm hoping that last week was the worst of it, but I've seen enough now to realize I might not recognize myself falling lower and lower at times.

I was on my walk, and I was thinking about this depression. I feel like I"m not in control. Of a lot of things, but really, the thing I'm least in control of are my FEELINGS. This marks the second time in my life that I've been unable to control my feelings.

This time it's better, and it's worse. It's better because I'm not having the thought disorder I had the first time. But this time is worse because it hurts so much more - that's the feeling I have - pain. Loss, grief, anger - it all traces back to pain. We have different words for it in the soul than in the body. It's pain.

And this time, the flood of overstimulation that this pain causes my being is making me behave in ways that I don't really approve of. It's like watching someone else at the controls of my life, sometimes. Being a passenger.

I set up a few new pictures of Jean around the house. Since she died, there had been only one picture of her in the house, because I gave some away right away to Brenda and Amy so they wouldn't be forced to remember Jean's last night.

So I set my favorite picture of Jean next to my bedside. And I just got up from listening idly to music and staring at the ceiling, because, that's kind of what I do now, and not much else. And there was Jean's picture, and I realized how much different it is to look at a picture of someone who is alive compared to someone who is dead.

Right now, I can't describe that feeling. Jean is 2-dimensional now. Lost from time. Only pictures to look backward to. No more new memories together. Even these memories, of these awful nights and sickening days, these I do not share with my love.

Sandra told me today that this is one of the worst stresses a human being will ever go through in their life.

I, uh, I wonder if that will make me feel worse or better tomorrow.

Forty nine days, man. Remember that journal in November I wrote about noticing Jean's deterioration, comparing it to a child growing 4 inches without you noticing.

Forty nine days ago was a goddamn EPOCH in my life. The fucking continents have shifted, and I'm facing an ocean that was never there before that fateful day 49 days ago.

I'll close from a line from a Tragically Hip song, which I'm reminded of with my ocean mataphor.

"New Orleans is sinking, man, and I don't wanna swim."


It is never too late to be what you might have been. -- George Eliot
Courage to start and willingness to keep everlasting at it are the requisites for success. -- Alonzo Newton Benn