1. The limited capacity for any more pain means putting off things like dental care and doing so means that when you finally return it takes 4 times as long and costs 5 times as much.
2. The softness in my body in places that were firm. Again, capacity. Work out? Stretch? Move? What the fuck is that?
3. I feel like the month I was with her alternating between cleaning out her home and sitting by her bed for the entirety of the visiting hours put me in a financial sitch I am still crawling out of 5.5 years later.
4. The dullness. Of my once razor sharp instincts and wit and decision making. It's coming back...slowly.
5. Being on it. washing my hair, doing my taxes, cleaning my bathroom. There used to be so much ease in these basic day to day tasks. It has become so complicated and whelming that I have a tendency to just not. Thankfully that ease is coming back as well but it's been a struggle and like most things in the missing and the grief it's the stuff that makes me feel good that seems to be so hard to do.
6. Feeding myself is an impossible task. It's always been hard but lately it seems harder.
7. Trust. I trust very few people, long term or out of the gate. I am guarded in a way I have never been before.
8. Friendships. I have let so many go. Yes there have been new ones that are clean and honest and real. It was surprising to me how much I was the go to person for so many and its not the reciprocal thing that made me end them, it was the nope you are not the one that gets my vulnerable heart right now. And i found myself wondering if *I* am the one they go to with their vulnerable hearts and deepest secrets then why wouldn't I go to them in return? What was it? The ones I did turn to stayed and the clearing out made room for new loves.
9. My introverted personality became even more so.
10. I think these are all positive in their own ways but one very positive thing is I gave up completely on balance. It was something I kept striving for and I lean towards obsession and allowance for whatever catches my fancy and I set my own hours mostly so balance? Nah. I first started chasing it when I first started looking into self help to help myself and all of the "experts" talked about balance and how necessary it was for a full and fulfilled life. It's all bullshit.
These musings are a response to Being Here, Human’s grief writing workshop and the (shorthand) invitation was “I invite you to articulate all the ways that loss comes in and changes our lives, our bodies, our experience of being here, human.”
(day 24 of Effy’s blog along)