Relapse

If I can manage to crawl out of bed tomorrow and make it to the couch it will be a miracle, I thought to myself as I went to bed Saturday night. My brain was fried, you know when it hurts just to think, when you have an actual headache because your brain was that worn out. Iv'e had this problem before, in times of high stress in my life. When my Grandfather died (he was 90 and lived a good long life) it was very stressful for my whole family and my brain was fried, Then I had Dan to take care of me, to help shoulder the burden, to fix me a bath and tell me not to come out till I was good and ready, to play with, distract and take care of Baby Girl. Several years ago Dan's dad was extremely ill and we thought he might die,  we spent days and days at the hospital, we leaned on each other then, we took care of his mom, I was there for Dan, for the whole family. His dad recovered and has outlived his youngest son. When I was pregnant with Baby Girl I went into preterm labor, I'm certain Dan's brain was fried then, I have never seen him so worried. I was on a ton of medication so my brain wasn't really there.  Dan died, my brain was fried, 6 months, a year, two years. At least two years. My brain hurt constantly for at least two years.

The last blog I wrote was all about how great we are at surviving, look we did it, we are making it in this land of grief. Summer was great. My brain didn't feel fried all summer (maybe I should come up with a better phrase then fried brain.) Baby Girl has been doing awesome. I wrote all that, I meant it. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.  I don't really believe in Karma or jinxes but sometimes I wonder. That was Thursday.

Friday I had a busy day planned, I worked in the morning (i'm still getting used to this working thing) and then I had plans to go volunteer at school and do some PTA things that must be done before school is out for the weekend. Working in the morning went well and I got alot done.  I was getting ready to leave for school when the school called me "Hello"  "Momma"  said a pathetic little voice. "I don't feel good can I come home" she had a very small fever, fever is what qualifies you to get to call home. "ok I'm coming to get you."  she had been saying off and on all week she hadn't been feeling well, maybe it finally caught up to her. I got to school a mere 3 minutes away. Baby Girl was sitting in the office waiting.  "I'm feeling better momma, I missed you." I sat down with her on the bench and asked her some basic questions, what felt bad, when did it start feeling bad, stuff like that.  Turns out she had had a really bad day, and her friend was being a "poopy head" and she really missed momma. I start thinking to myself, she's not sick, this is anxiety, but she has a fever, school doesn't let you call home unless you have a fever, is her anxiety so bad she physically made herself sick? does it matter, if her anxiety is bad enough that she mustered the courage to tell her teacher she was sick, and go to the office and tell them and call me something is up.  "ok lets just go home and snuggle"  so we did.

My child handles her grief in what I call "grief tantrums" she gets so mad and angry that she really can't control herself.  It starts with something innocuous, in this instance she wanted to go play with her friends and I said no because she came home from school sick.  These tantrums quickly evolve into screaming, crying, slamming doors, throwing things. She has so much anger in her little heart, I get it, I'm angry he died too, I want to scream and yell and throw things too, sometimes I do, but I'm 27 years older than her and I have learned to hold it in. She's ten, sometimes especially when it comes to grieving she's stuck at being seven, thats how old she was when her daddy died. This is how she deals with it.  This is how I dealt with it on Friday: I called my mother in law to come rescue me.  She got there and I left, walked out of the house with Baby Girl still screaming and raging. I got into my car and drove. I was crying so hard I probably should have pulled over. I called my best friend, "I just can't do it anymore, I just can't, she had such a good summer, I can't go back to how it was last year."

They say year two of grief is worse than the first year. In my experience that is 100% true. They only thing I can attribute it to is just massive massive shock. We were in massive shock the whole first year, even the whole first year and a half.  I can't remember anything from that year. I will look at pictures and have no clue where we are or what we are doing in them. I just got out our halloween decorations and there is all kinds of stuff I bought and didn't remember we had.  Last year I guess the shock was wearing off you could say, I guess we were learning how to live in this alien world. Last year I remember. Last year was completely and utterly and horribly awful. Last year Baby Girl came home from school and cried about every other day. Last year Baby Girl had those giant screaming, throwing grief tantrums about twice a week. Last year, desperate to help her, my nine year old started taking anti depressants. Last year the shock started to wear off and Baby Girl was pissed as hell that her best friend, her hero, her daddy was dead. I get it. It still sucked.

"I can't do it, I can't do this all year again, she was doing so good, we can't go back" still sobbing to my friend, It wasn't nesacerrily that Baby Girl had had a grief tantrum after all she's had dozens and dozens of them before, It's that it all came rushing back, how completely awful last year was, and how I didn't want to live through that again.  Just this summer felt like we were starting to live again, I didn't want to go back to just surviving.  My bestie, always the prevaer of common sense "Listen, if you thought you were going to get through this whole thing and not have any relapses you were kidding yourself. It's just a relapse, it doesn't cancel out all the progress you made and it doesn't mean you are going straight back to how it was last year"  Her and her common sense sometimes I wonder why I call her all the while knowing thats exactly why I call her.

I got to my destination and everyone asked where Baby Girl was. "O she came home early from school with a fever so she stayed home with grandma"  I'm not one to sugar coat grief but I didn't want to start sobbing again either.  I got home and Baby Girl had calmed down and was watching TV with Grandma. In an unstable emotional state we decided it was best if we just stayed home on Saturday and rested.  It's a good thing too because Baby Girl had another massive grief Tantrum on Saturday.  Much the same as Fridays. I can remember her having just one all summer long and now we had just had two in a row. Awesome. I didn't call grandma to rescue me this time. I stayed with her, I watched her rage, I handed her safe things to throw, I said "yes what else can we smash" (FYI crackers make great things to stomp your rage into) we ended up lying on the living room floor Baby Girl sobbing as I rubberd her back, telling me she was sorry she got so mad, but she just gets mad and then she can't control it. We talked for a long time about being angry and what we can do about it. It felt like we were making progress. I said "Ya I get that, sometimes when I'm really sad or mad or angry it makes me really miss Daddy" True to Baby Girl she changed the subject drastically.

 Hence I went to bed Saturday night with my brain fried, thinking it would take a miracle to get me out of bed on Sunday. My dead husband being alive would probably get me out of bed.  Unfortunately that didn't happen, Never the less I got out of bed on Sunday anyway. We had a good day Sunday, no grief tantrums and we got out the Halloween decorations. Go us.

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