How Many Tissues Will It Take? #ROW80 #NaNoWriMo
Seriously. This is wearing me out.
I fear I'm going to wear out what's left of my audience if I keep posting about it. Yet if I make this topic taboo I'll probably end up not posting at all just like I did in 2016 when so many of the topics occupying my mind became taboo for posting. When I decided to re-commit to writing and blogging again, I knew it meant committing to truth over taboo so I guess that also means committing to truth over stats if it comes to that.
But seriously!!!
How many tissues will it take?
I ask because I emptied a box this evening. It wasn't full when this ordeal began in late September and it never occurred to me to make note of its level at that time but the experience of reaching into the box and finding the bare bottom called my attention to the issue and has me wondering if I will be using them at the same rate by the time I finish the fresh box my sister gave me tonight.
But seriously!!!
Where do they all come from? It doesn't seem I'm drinking enough extra water to account for them. In fact I am drinking extra coffee to replace the energy expended.
And Oh Boy does it use up energy.
Grief crying is a full body workout. Every muscle from the face and neck to the fingers and toes are in play. And then as if to repay me for their torture the muscles in my feet and shins wake me from one of the rare sound sleeps with cramps that force me to get up and pace the hall until I can walk normally again. But when I try to crawl back into bed as often as not a single toe twitch will set the spasms off again.
At least that muscle spasming has one good thing going for it. It co-opts the grief spasms. Even though the pain can be an agony that makes me want to scream it completely distracts me from the urge to fold up over my crossed arms and silent-howl into my pillow.
Did you know that in grief you no longer own your body but rather your body owns you? That grief inhabits the hind brains and the blood and tissues of the organs? That it refuses to be contained or comprehended by the frontal lobe? That every time reason claims a foothold and proclaims itself in control again grief swings a sucker punch with a sense-memory dredged up out of the viscera and suddenly it is as if no time at all has passed since the phone call that broke your heart?
Did you know that grief makes you feel chilled? That your teeth chatter and your muscles shiver and your ribcage tremors and the goosebumps crawl up your spine into your scalp?
Did you know that grief makes you feel fevered? That your face gets hot and your skin sore like sunburn and sweat pops out of every pore as it does in a sauna?
Did you know that grief melts fat? The weight I struggled to take off all year at the rate of two or three pounds a month has fallen off at the rate of a quarter pound a day for the last six weeks. I've dropped from a size 20 snug to a size 16 snug in less than two months.
Or maybe that's all been water weight. Twenty pounds of tears? I could believe it.
I suspect that the hard time I'm having today is fallout from spending Friday and Saturday afternoons and evenings at my cousin's house doing Ed's laundry. Handling his clothes and bedding entailed too many triggers of those visceral memories. She sent the last load over to me this afternoon and this evening's tissue tugging started after I finished sorting the basket full into keep and give-away piles.
Yeah. I'm keeping some of them to wear myself. Is that too weird?
Doesn't matter if it is. I'm committed. It's part of the process for me.
Plus I talked my cousin's ear off for hours both days. And bawled on her shoulder. I knew I was talking to someone intimately familiar with grief because she had been her parents caretaker for over a decade before their deaths a few years ago and she lost her 16 year old daughter in the late 80s. It was that daughter's death that was the inspiration for my story Blow Me a Candy Kiss. I thought I was consumed by grief when I wrote that but now I know that was just grief nibbling around the edges.
Meanwhile....
ROW80 goals and NaNoWriMo quotas have gotten shorted since Friday when my plans for a catchup weekend were flummoxed by discovery that the 12 bags of Ed's laundry had been exposed to the rainstorm after wind blew the tarp off them in the wee hours. I had been getting back on track between Sunday and Thursday.
Well, I'll just have to remember that I did do that which means it is doable.
And I did get some NaNo words in this morning using my new Windows tablet in bed.
Backstory highlights and high and low notes:
2020 Folding Up
3 tell me a story:
Oh, how I wish there was something I could say to ease your pain. I don't know you at all, and though I have suffered grief (my sister who was my best friend passed away in 1999 at age 39 and not a single day goes by that I don't miss her), I've never experienced the pain you are going through.
There are so many things I'd like to tell you, but I don't want to fall into what might sound like preaching. So I'll offer you two simple pieces of advice.
Drink lots of water. As you already know, grieving is taking so much out of you not only emotionally, but physically. Water can't fix everything physically, but you don't need to be dehydrated on top of everything else (those cramps are probably a combination of the stress on top of being dry).
And number 2 - get away. Get away from the clothes and his other things and people who mean well and people who don't care. And just go some place alone (even though you may feel like you have been nothing but alone), some place new or different or even familiar which feels like a home away from home. Go some place and sit outside absorbing nature. Or if you can't be outside (because we can't sit outside where I live, with snow falling), curl up with your favorite food - even if you have to force yourself to eat it - and watch the funniest, dumbest movie you can find. For myself, I'd go with "The Princess Bride", but like I said, I don't know you so don't know what movies you like, but find one that lets you escape.
Ok, that's all I got. Sorry if this started to sound like that lecture. Hang in there.
Chris,
Thankyou for your compassion and advice. The water issue was called to my attention by more than one other person. And my cousin identified magnesium/potassium deficiency as possible cause of the cramps and gave me some tablets to tide me over until I could send for my own. And after posting last Sunday's post in the wee hours of Monday I identified sleep deprivation as a primary cause of how out of control I'd gotten since Thursday. I've made a point of getting the extra sleep and am doing better. A 5 or 6 on a scale of 1-10 instead of a 10.5.
Because of my visual impairment I can't get away physically but I can put triggering items out of sight and I can give some time every day to activities that distract me. I'd actually planned to spend my birthday binging videos--movies and old TV series before the laundry issue forced itself on me. I am planning to do that this weekend after Mom leaves for her weekend with my brother.
Meanwhile I've got my NaNo project and am engrossed in the first book of Game of Thrones series as well as Season 2 of the TV series on disc. Have also been sharing episodes of the old sitcom Family Affair with my Mom at dinner most of the evenings she is home. I watch she listens and when the visual is important to understanding I pause and describe the scene and/or repeat dialog she didn't understand. It takes us about 40 minutes to watch the 25 minute episodes. I am finding joy in this experience.
I've also got some other concepts in mind which I think I will save for my ROW80 checkin post which I'd set out to create when I re-found your comment. But that will have to wait until after dinner now as it is my turn to cook. Am making nachos and looking forward to having my share.
Joy,
The thing that jumped out at me in your response is "finding joy". Maybe that's the key. Find the joy in the little things, find the joy in something every day. And let those pieces of joy (or Joy) be what you focus on to get over the next hurdle!
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