Living in your home after a death | Offbeat Home

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Living in your home after a death | Offbeat Home

Slowly starting to feel more normal

Well, that's pretty much it at the moment.  I'm slowly getting back to a normal that I'd forgotten was my normal state.  I'm not feeling constantly worn out.  I have energy to do stuff in the evenings.  I have the brain power to be creative at work even when I'm bored stiff and working on audits.  I can go out socialising 4 nights in a row.  I will confess to having a completely switched off day on the Sunday immediately after all this but that's not bad given that it wasn't that long ago when I struggled to leave the house to be sociable more than once a week!

At least, that's what today's been like.  I don't know what tomorrow may bring.  I have even less idea what I might think of life in the next few weeks when I start getting thoroughly fed up of January and darkness and stuff.  Quite what it's going to be like by the time I get to February and then March, I really don't have a clue.  I've booked lots of time off work around then so I've got plenty of space to do my own thing, whatever that may be.  It won't all be time for wallowing either as I've volunteered to help at the church kids' week before Easter so there will be lots of stuff going on as well.

I want to say that time's making everything look brighter but I might be horribly wrong.  I'm really not sure yet where I've currently got to in the whole grieving process.  I'm pretty sure I'm through with anger which is a very good thing.  I don't think I'm depressed although that might have much more to do with me trying my hardest not to be completely flattened by the normal greyness and darkness of January.  Meh, I'm just in a fairly bland sort of mood.  Life is blissfully normal in most ways and what more could I ask for?

(Yes, if you read this post last night, it did end completely differently.  In the cold light of day, I decided to edit it all!)

Ramblings about drama and stuff

I have come to the conclusion that there are far too many emotions tied up into one show for me to deal with at once.

To start with, you have the buzz of the show that amplifies everything in the first place.

 - I met Gav at one theatre group

 - He founded another

 - Being at a show thus feels weird because show + Gav = normality

 - I really miss being able to do drama. I don't sing so well and although they're currently doing a play, rehearsal clashes with my home group night.
 - I really miss the atmosphere backstage during a show.

 - I really, really miss Gav if I go and watch a show.  It just feels wrong without his commentary on what's going on technicals/back-stage-wise.

 - The last time I walked into a full auditorium that had the proper pre-"show"-type of buzz, I walked straight back out again, out through the main doors and down to the beach to watch the waves for 10 minutes by myself.  I found it all more upsetting than I expected.  The fact that I was desperately lacking in sleep and had been working 50 hour weeks during the lead-in would also have been a contributory factor.

 - Being almost on tenterhooks because I'm trying to process all of the above means that my idiot filter has a hair trigger.

 - My mum is capable of setting my idiot filter off without even being aware of it if I'm not concentrating.

 - My mum also appears to insist on asking stupid-sounding questions (in the name of polite conversation and small talk) that would be just as easily answered by reading the programme properly or sitting and watching the show for 5 minutes.

 - I mean, for fuck's sake, NO I DON'T KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON WITH ANY SUBSTITUTIONS, YOU READ THAT FACEBOOK UPDATE THE SAME AS ME, THAT'S ALL I KNOW!!!!!  I NO LONGER HAVE ANY FUCKING LINK TO THE INSIDE INFORMATION ABOUT THE SHOW!!!!!

(and breathe!)

(all caps was deliberate then, as was swearing and bold and the five exclamation marks, clearly the sign of a deranged mind ;o) )

So, yeah, that's why I was watching tonight's show from the corridor rather than from my seat.

Feeling better tonight

I ended up taking today off of work and did my usual trick of going to the cafe/deli on the local high street for lunch where the food is amazing.  Freshly cooked, local ham, egg and chips is a pretty good medicine for heartache it appears.

I've realised that I need to learn to tell the difference between what seems to be making me upset and what's really making me upset.  I thought I was getting into a confusion because of the-friend-who-I-have-an-unsuitable-crush-on but I wasn't.  That was an easy thing to focus on and prevented me from realising that, actually, I just really miss Gav and there's a part of me that's not looking forwards to Christmas because he won't be around.  I don't have an enormously large crush on the-friend-who-I-have-an-unsuitable-crush-on, just a tiny one and I've dealt with that before, in the past, so I can do it again.  As far as I can tell, my relationship and the way I act around him never goes into inappropriate territory; I'm the one pulling back from a hug if it feels wrong.  His relationship with me isn't really my problem, that's something he needs to sort out himself.

I've also decided that it would be a good use of my time to randomly take a day off midweek every couple of months or so.  While I probably appear quite articulate (if longwinded) on this blog, in real life, it can take me a really long time to work out what I really think or feel about something.  Sometimes, I can come up with answers instantly.  Sometimes, I don't even realise that part of my brain is telling me that something is wrong until I end up over-reacting to something completely unrelated.  Taking the occasional day off here and there to do nothing but try to get my head around wherever I've got to at that point can only be a good thing.

First thing to do tomorrow at work - check the annual leave chart and work out when my next random day off will be! :o)

Full of large amounts of melancholy right now

Not for any particular reason that I can think of, just "cuz for" (Family variant of "because" when asked "why?" of something)

Today is obviously a day for using long and archaic words

(on an unrelated note, wasn't there some indie-ish band in the mid/early 90s which had a name along the lines of X and the Melancholic Ys or was there an album called Melancholia or something, Melon Kolly? I think it was probably during my Take That-hating, Let Loose-loving days of early teenagerhood (why yes, my iPod does have untold seams of cheesy, apparently crap pop music that I still love anyway ;o) ))  {too many brackets again!}

Ah, said iPod has just started playing the song that has probably caused my melancholy this evening.  Lana del Rey's Video Games.  The strange thing is, it reminds me much more of my relationship with an ex-boyfriend than it does mine with Gav. (Apart from that line about "he holds me in his big arms" which makes me think of the-friend-who-I-have-an-unsuitable-crush-on!).  In all fairness, Pumped Up Kicks by Foster the People probably hasn't overly helped either.  Xfm is currently radio station of choice when I've got access to either internet or a DAB radio.

I find myself listening to a lot more music now than I used to.  And, and this is the impressive bit, I've finally stopped turning my music right down so that no one can hear and comment on whatever I'm listening to.  I realised that I got into this habit way, way back, probably when  I was still in 6th form, when my then-best-friend-and-guy-I'd-fancied-for-far-too-long was a complete and utter music "snob".  It wasn't worth listening to unless it was played by, ideally, John Peel or, at a push, Steve Lamacq.  On the other hand, he was also first to ask to borrow "Performance and Cocktails" when that came out.  Part of me still misses how simple 6th Form was, even if it really didn't feel it at the time.  I don't miss the stress of having a mum who seemed to believe that an "A" stood for Average instead of being the top grade, but then-best-friend-etc had a mum who was just as bad.

Hello again.  My brain's just come back from a tangent where I was contemplating my favourite memories of then-best-friend-etc (who, for simplicity, I shall refer to as Tim, that having been his name!).  They are good memories.  He was a complete sweetie when he wasn't being an arrogant git.  The good thing about writing all this down, is that you aren't aware of the huge gaps in my writing while I go off into another reverie as another memory floats into my brain.  I can't believe how young I really was at 17 either.  I was still a complete kid in some ways.  But, then again, it's stuff like that that has shaped the me that's sat on the sofa now. [Cheesy pop alert!  One Direction - What makes you beautiful, I am no longer to be ashamed by such crap!]

When I started this blog, I was full of anger at God.  That's not there so much at the moment.  In all honesty, I haven't been thinking of Him so much recently, I've been generally distracted and can't connect with God at all.  That probably, almost certainly in fact, means that I need to make a concerted effort to sit down for some prayer time by myself.  Hmmm.  

Oh how I wish that my life was easy and simple at the moment.  I really don't want to be wondering about the-friend-who-I-have-an-unsuitable-crush-on and how he didn't appear to speak to his wife all night at a group Christmas dinner but he searched me out and came up at the end to give me a hug and said either "Happy Christmas, gorgeous" or "Happy Christmas, you look gorgeous".  I can't really remember which it was that he said, I was more floored by being called gorgeous.  I admit, I was looking good, for reasons that I explained last night, but I hadn't dressed up to go fishing for compliments, well, not beyond the normal, girly, preening compliments that all women share when they're more than usually dressed up!  Random thought, at least I've grown well out of the stage of memorising every single thing that a crush says to me so that I can replay the conversation later and extract every single (imagined) nuance.  If I hadn't, I'd have perfect recall of what he said.

Complete detour, it turns out that, by the end of that previous paragraph, I'd got to 749 words.  What are the chances of managing to continue wittering onwards until I hit 1000 words?

Oh yeah, Christmas.  That's what I think I originally meant to blog about in the first place, but I got distracted by memories of standing out on the terrace at school before A-levels and thinking that I'd never feel so connected to another human in my entire life.

...

There is going to be such a fucking hole in this house over Christmas, it's untrue!  

And, in essence, that's all that I really want to say or think about the matter.

No one to wake up next to in the morning

No one to co-host Christmas lunch with.

No one to tell silly, exaggerated stories that no one is quite sure whether or not to believe but there's always the chance that it really did happen just like that (if you've ever seen Big Fish, you'll know precisely the sort of thing that I mean!)

No one to enjoy that companionable silence with after everyone's gone and you can finally get away with sprawling on the sofa and enjoying all the new books you got.

No one to drag to the midnight service.

No one to cause me to remember to watch the Dr Who Christmas special (I'm assuming that, as normal, there'll be one this Christmas.  I really don't know though, as I never normally bother to watch the TV.  Books or the internet will always win in my opinion.)

I'm now trying to second-guess myself.  Do I want a glass of Bailey's because it tastes good or because a shot will stop my brain caring about all this stuff I've just typed out.  You, my imaginary reader, may well be telling me that I surely deserve a glass of Baileys after all of this but, after a break-up with my first proper boyfriend while I was at uni in London (a city which I really do hate living in), I realised how easy it would be to turn to alcohol to fix everything and I promised myself that I would never drink alcohol when I was in a bad mood.  In the past 11 years, I've broken that promise to myself only once and that was shortly after being told that my contract at work would not be up for renewal and later finding out that they'd taken someone else who was barely more qualified than me on at twice what I'd been on. I think I was only allowed one single vodka/orange juice before my friends decided that I was in a thoroughly out of character mood and was not allowed to drink any more alcohol and certainly not at that speed.

In conclusion, I'm going to have hot chocolate without Baileys as I think I'm after the alcohol purely to calm my brain down enough to get to sleep quickly and that is a bad reason to drink if there's no one else around to keep an eye on you.

(1268 words, if you're curious, not including this final line)

And a carer I was, too.

29 years old is far too young to be changing your fiancé's dressings and being complimented on your bandaging skills by the district nurses because none of them are quite as good as you.

That "in sickness and in health" bit - I would have meant every word if I'd have had chance to say it properly in the church.

(Okay, no more Twitter style updates unless I manage to plug Twitter into this blog! :o) )

That previous post feels very disloyal

But, screw it, that's where my head is at the moment.  There's a part of me that wants to celebrate being free and not being a carer any more.  And that's important too.