I am just going to have to be a weirdo and heal in the best way I can

Coming up on 2 months since Skip died and I am still struggling.  Life has just changed so much that it is hard to keep up with day to day life at times.  Then there is this terrible frustration with myself that I have been unable to move through this grief on this imaginary timeline that I have no idea how I decided this was how it should be. Somehow, I decided grief was like the flu, it was a 2 to 4-week illness and then it is over, life went on as usual, except for an occasional remembrance with tears.  I had lost parents and grieved, I thought I knew grief, I had muscled through them, not missing work or other commitments, but I have never experienced grief like this. 

None of the counseling and reading has addressed my grief better than this book by Megan Devine. It is specific about grief, and how it manifests. It has given me permission to have them and given me some "tools" to survive them.  

It is OK that I do not want to be around lots of people now, even though it never bothered me before, It is OK that I feel guilty donating and giving away his things, It is OK that I have bouts of “Widow Brain” another version of “can’t remember shit”, but this is so much worse!  Like finding my car keys in the bathroom medicine cabinet, finding it difficult to read or “string” words together to write.  Running into people that are truly kind and concerned but their way of relating to my grief is to tell me about the death of someone they loved. I wonder if they have any idea how hard that is for me to listen to, or how much it truly does not help, in fact, it makes things worse.  The first thing I want to do is kick them in the shin, make them shut up, but I listen and smile politely.  Why do they think I want to hear about their grief experience? Right now, I have all of the grief I can possibly handle, and they want to share more pain and grief with me. I am too overwhelmed with my own.  Then I feel guilty for feeling like that.  It is just easier to avoid most people than to go through that over and over and over again. There are literally hundreds of doubts, pain, and awful feelings that I am still going through, but I know that this is part of it.  That not allowing myself to have them can do more damage than good.   So, for now, I am just going to have to be a weirdo and heal in the best way I can even if it does not make sense to anyone else.

"Hide Your Love Away"  The Beatles