Blame.

I went to therapy today. Today is also the 12th, which means it's now 21 months since Dan died. Also today my mother in law flew to Minnesota to visit family which she does regularly and I do on occasion. I went into therapy and I said "Today's the 12th and my mother in law is flying to Minnesota and I know it is completely irrational but I'm afraid her plane is going to crash because bad things happen on the 12th." and my therapist said "of course you are, you have PTSD, it makes perfect sense" well that did actually make me feel a little better. You see, I like to consider myself a fairly smart, rational human being. It is impossible to explain the feeling you have when you are afraid of something and you know perfectly well in your head it's not going to happen and you shouldn't be afraid of it and yet you are anyway and you can't stop. I am happy to say my mother in law landed in Minnesota safely.

This of course got us talking about Dan. Which is really all I do in therapy is talk about my dead husband like it's some huge life altering thing. We had a very interesting conversation. It started with me telling her how we had several friends who were pregnant again. Yes again. They already had babies once since Dan died and now they are pregnant again. And this simple little thing makes me furious at Dan. For one there are a whole lot of kids he is supposed to be "uncle" to that will never know him, They will go through life listening to their parents talk about him and think "why are they always talking about this crazy dead guy," Second, this is supposed to be us. Remember Dan we are supposed to have a toddler right now, we are supposed to be planning a third one. We are supposed to be a family, a really happy family. How could you just leave us Dan?  How could you leave me and baby girl.

Well this got us talking about the next subject which is: I blame Dan for dying and I am so so mad at him for dying. You see my rational brain knows perfectly well it wasn't his fault. It was a bizarre accident. After all there is a greater chance your plane will crash then you will die of a seizure (probably, I didn't actually fact check that, I'm just assuming). My rational brain knows he would have stayed here with me and baby girl if he could have. My rational brain tells me he didn't get a choice in the matter. But I'm still mad at him. I still blame him. I can't explain how the two co-exist but they do.

Then the therapy went deep.  We talked about how Dan (if you know Dan you will go yup that's exactly him) would always downplay things. If he had a catch phrase it would be something like "Don't worry it will be fine" He always said this about everything. They could be having a crisis at work (and I mean a real crisis, he worked in a mental health facility) and he would say "don't worry it will be fine" and then he would calmly fix said crisis. Whenever he was sick and I suggested he go to a dr. he would say "don't worry it will be fine" (he also whined like a baby when he was sick, but he was fine) The very few times he had seizures before, he would come out of them and say "what are you all worked up for? I'm fine" One time I called his parents and he said "why did you bother them? I'm perfectly fine"

The only things he ever worried about were me and baby girl. There was no messing around when it came to us. If baby girl had a sniffle he would say "maybe we should take her to the dr." Once when I was pregnant I missed the last couple stairs and fell down them. He came flying down the stairs and insisted we go to the ER and make sure we were ok. Then I had to say "no I'm fine" about a million times and refuse to get in the car.

Dan never worried. He was the king of not making a big deal out stuff. He never worried about his seizures, so I never worried about them. We really had no reason to, they were so rare. This is why when he had his last seizure and I called 911 I was picturing Dan telling me "why did you call and bother them? I was fine. They have people that actually need saving" that's what Dan was supposed to tell me as he lay in a ER bed annoyed that they drug him in there and he couldn't go home yet. Because he was just fine. That's what I believed was going to happen because with Dan things always turned out fine. That's why I'm so mad at you Dan. That's why I yell at you, and flip you off, and blame you for everything, and cry, and scream. Really I can't describe the depth of my anger at you Dan. Because this time when it actually really really mattered things didn't turn out fine.

Therapy: everyone should go.

I wrote a book about my grief, you can read it here: Carry on Castle