Broken Record

Eight weeks today.  Eight.  Since Chuck passed away, died, transitioned.

I'm going to be a broken record for awhile.
I am making no apology for it.
I'm just letting you know.

Time has been playing tricks on me, big time.  I'd begun to see time differently the last year as I had embarked on my quest to learn and read and see what called to me spiritually.  I'd already understood and accepted that time is not linear and we control how time passes.

Talk about proof! 
I've been experiencing time in speeds and sensations that are all sorts of mixed up.
I've been present for a lot of the last eight weeks yet I have no concept for most of it having passed until I get to a day like today and honestly can't figure out how another four weeks snuck in there when just a moment ago I was at the one month mark! The feeling of time has completely changed for me.  I've never felt it like this.  So far away, yet so immediate.  So slow and yet accumulating.  Accelerating.  I'm aware of the opposites in a different way.

The feeling that time is and it isn't.  Simultaneously.  
I guess that sums it up best.



But then again, everything is different.  Says me, the broken record.



If you've been keeping up with my blogs, you might have noticed I mentioned feeling sick.  I've held off from talking about that in detail.  I haven't quite known how to write it yet, partly because I kept thinking it couldn't be possible (the correlation of the event of his death, and my feeling sick).  But it is, and today I think I found the words for it.  At lunch with My Sweetheart today, we were talking about it and I said this has been "a shock to my system."  I hadn't thought of using that phrase until it came out of my mouth, and then I knew why that phrase even exists.  Yes.  This has been a shock to my system.  And when your system has a shock, it alters.

The change was more than emotional, mental and spiritual.  My body, my insides, are in a state of...trauma...you could say.  I did take note of that.  I even know the date I took note something was not right.  I just filed it away because I thought it couldn't be.

He was gone May 27.  His funeral was on his mothers, my grandmothers, birthday.  May 31.  The night of May 27 I came home and drank three red plastic cups full of 7-up and vodka.  I cried myself to sleep.  I talked to My Sweetheart about the experience of that day until the wee hours and one of the last things I remember saying was, "why should I get to sleep in a bed when Chuck doesn't get to?" I wasn't sick when I woke up.

June 8 was opening night of a show My Sweetheart was in.  We celebrated at a bar near our house, where I had one long island, a kamikaze shot or two and half a beer.  Later at a house party I had a little red wine.

I should make it clear here, I don't booze regularly, but when I do I can drink quite a bit for someone my size and I am never hung over.

After that opening night party, I woke up sick.  Really sick.  Throwing up, can hardly stand up, splitting headache sick.  It was bad.  It was like having the flu.  It was so close to having the flu that I thought I had the flu, because that never happens to me from drinking alcohol.

June 8 was the day that marked my sick.  From then on, it has been in the back of my mind that this whole experience with Chuck has made me sick.  That word keeps whispering to me.  Sick.  I was even dreaming I was sick.  In one of them I was laying on a sidewalk and people were around me, my mom was there, I think she was holding my hand.  I think I was dying.  My brain was swelling and blood was starting to come out of my eyes but I felt peaceful and I think I wanted her to feel peace, too.  What does that mean?! I actually started to get worried.  What were my dreams trying to say? I have not felt totally okay since.  I have not been able to drink since.  I have tried to have a glass of something just a couple of times and I can't do it.  One drink, if I can even finish it, and I wake up sick.

Last night I tried to have a glass of my favorite champagne.  Today I am so sick I don't know how I made it through all I had to do today.  I feel terrible.  This is the exact opposite of how I have been my whole life.  I can't believe there was ever a time when I could go out to a bar have multiple drinks and be okay.  My body is repelling alcohol.  It does not want it.  It is rejecting it.

Okay, okay, I hear you.  That's that.  And that's fine.  I haven't wanted to be drunk anyway, because I've wanted to feel what I'm feeling and I've wanted to be in tune with everything.  I haven't wanted to go out to a bar with friends because I haven't felt social.  But now I wonder if I'll ever feel like it (or even be able to) again?

Let's talk about the other change, the exhaustion.  I hate naps.  I don't function well on too little sleep.  I am someone who definitely needs to get a good amount of sleep to feel rested and function properly but taking a nap is a rarity.

I think yesterday was the first day I acknowledged I am in a state of exhaustion.  I am so tired, all the time.  And it hit me I have had to nap every day, regardless of how strenuous the day was or wasn't, for I don't even know how long.  Days? Weeks? I told you time is playing tricks on me and I don't know how long it's been.

The effect of alcohol and the inability to fight these naps are completely out of character for me!

There's been a big change.  I think for the most part I am a very aware person.  I am very in tune with my emotions and thoughts with the last eight weeks...but I must not be completely.  I think there is a part of this sadness, a depression hanging over me even more than I've acknowledged.

My body is trying to communicate with me.  I have to heighten my awareness in that department.  I can still go through motions, I can work, I can talk, I can run errands, I can run outside, I can go to the gym.  But beyond the requirements I don't want to take on anything additional.  Make social effort.  I don't want to try to be good company.  I don't want to stay busy and go out for the sake of staying busy or going out.  I want to hibernate.  I want to be in my home.  I want to be with my family.  I want to read.  I want to write.  I want my animals.  I want to rest.


I want to feel better.
I want to be alone or with my loved ones only when I cry for no reason.
When I fall asleep unexpectedly.
When I don't feel good.
When I need to give in to all of the above.

I'm not sure what else I'm trying to say.  Other than I'm realizing the sad goes deeper than even I knew. That it's changed me in all ways, even my internal makeup.  That I am sad.  That I am so tired.  That I never feel good.  That I am in a funk.  There you go.  That this is my new normal.  Forever, for awhile, I don't know.  I would guess it's for awhile, but I have no idea when it will change.  It will probably sneak up on me, it will probably just happen.  Before I fully realize.  Just like now.  As time is tricking me.  It will trick me again.  That I probably won't stay a broken record forever.  But right now, here I am.  This is me.  Today.  And I'm trying to embrace and acknowledge it.  Even thought it's not happy.  Especially because it's not happy.  That I might need to really give in before I even come out, in a deeper way than I have been.  I just didn't know.  I can't believe how much I don't know about this process.

This is me working through it,
at this very second,
at eight weeks in.

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