Health by Heidi

  Anger.  Sadness.  Depression.  Manic.  Anxiety.  Despair.  Overwhelm.  I don't want any of them, but they keep showing up.  I keep thinking, hoping, this party will someday end, but it keeps going.  None of the guests want to leave.  Grief is ugly.  Grief is illogical.  One of my friends compared it to a sneaker wave.  Out of nowhere, it crashes down on me with tidal wave force, bringing any number of its friends along for the fun.  I get tossed and tumbled in the chaos, waiting to surface before I run out of air. Purging helps.  Getting the words out, getting the emotions down on paper, putting names to the things I am feeling, even if I don't know why I'm feeling them, all helps.  Anger was in firm control at the beginning of this week.  Writing about it and talking about it and yelling into the ether all helped.  I purged as much of it as I could.  Why Anger showed up now, in such fo...

  Well, it happened.  This morning, Grief ushered Rage back into the party.  Not so much ushered.  Rage crashed down upon my head like a piano falling from a third-story window.  People told me Rage would come, that one day I would be angry at Scott.  I didn't believe them.  Turns out they were right. I woke up at 2:00 this morning from bad dreams, and immediately felt crushed by Rage.  I tossed and turned until the alarm went off a few short hours later.  Rage never loosened his grip.  I got up, walked into the bathroom, and started cleaning up the cat pee on the tile.  Lily, the 18-year-old cat who Scott rescued as a tiny kitten, refuses to use the litter box now, despite three vet visits and three rounds of medicine to treat her persistent UTI.  So every morning, and often in the afternoon when I get home from work, I have to clean up cat pee on the bathroom floor.   I didn't ask for this .   With no warn...

  I cried yesterday.  It had been a while.  Sadness is still ever-present, but I had not cried in weeks.  And then, I sold the X1.  It was the pop-up tent camper on top of Scott's truck.  A guy came down from Great Falls and bought it.  I was happy to sell it.  It's such a specific item designed for a specific truck.  I have no attachment to the X1.  Scott only bought it last year.  He used it several times when he was bird hunting, but I only slept in it once, and that was this past June.  I held no sentimental value toward it.  And yet.  When I saw it being lifted off his truck and placed onto a different truck, it got me.  I stood there in the middle of a hayfield, watching the two men work the tractors to move the X1 from one truck to the other, and I cried.  I hoped they would not notice.  Perhaps they would think it was the fierce wind rocketing out of the western canyons that drew tears to my eye...

  It's been three months.   "Wow, I can't believe it's been three months.  It seems like it just happened."     Does it?  Does it seem like it just happened?  From my perspective, it feels like it's been three years, or three decades, or three lifetimes.  How has it ONLY been three months? I started purging.  I felt ready.  The shoes went first.  Then the clothes.  Tools.  Trailers.  More clothes.  Ski stuff.  Snowboard stuff.   "That seems fast.  Are you sure you're ready?" Yes, I am ready.  It seems fast compared to what?  Is there a written timeline or checklist that I'm not aware of?  His shoes sat by the garage door for weeks.  Initially, I couldn't imagine them not being there.  Finally, I got tired of tripping over them.  I was ready.   "Don't make any big decisions in the first year." I can't remember how many times I've heard this....