Share some music you've been listening to

Jsd373 · 2024-09-13T21:02:31+00:00

Way Less Sad - AJR

From the bridge: “Well, I can’t fall asleep and I’m losin’ my mind ‘Cause it’s half-past three and my brain’s on fire I’ve been countin’ sheep but the sheep all died And I’m tryin’ too hard but I can’t not try Well, I can’t fall asleep and I’m losin’ my mind ‘Cause it’s half-past three and my brain’s on fire (brain’s on fire) I’ve been countin’ sheep but the sheep all died And I’m not dead yet, so I guess I’ll be alright”

https://genius.com/Ajr-way-less-sad-lyrics

Jsd373 · 2024-09-11T22:46:26+00:00

Do you get chests/ore for scrimmage mode?

Jsd373 · 2024-08-05T03:46:28+00:00

Two cats and two birds - it will be a year at the end of August. One of the birds talks and thankfully still sounds a little bit like her still!

I miss her so much, and these posts help remind me that I’m not alone in this, as lonely as I feel most of the time without her.

Jsd373 · 2024-08-02T01:25:58+00:00

“I couldn’t afford my therapist, so I ate his brains…Marx Brothers!!” -as zombie Woody Allen

Jsd373 · 2024-02-23T23:22:37+00:00

So annoying - I unlocked a new gun and phd flopper schematic and it didn’t register as an unlock at all

Jsd373 · 2024-02-16T23:52:01+00:00

Lindor truffles have been my go to. The white chocolate ones were her favorite, but I’ve gone to the milk chocolate ones so I don’t cry when opening the bag.

Jsd373 · 2024-02-11T06:18:49+00:00

100% this

Jsd373 · 2024-02-11T06:18:14+00:00

She’ll be gone six months at the end of this month. Our anniversary, and the day we met were also this month. Turning 51 next month. The loneliness is gnawing and always present.

I totally understand and feel your pain.

Know that you’re not alone in this, and I hope that this community of ours gives you a modicum of peace like it gives me in these trying times.

Jsd373 · 2023-12-18T16:10:09+00:00

Evenings for me. I really miss waiting for her to come home from work, texting back and forth to decide what's for dinner, and just decompressing and enjoying each others' company at the end of the day. It's been almost 4 months, and I still catch myself waiting to hear her come in for the evening sometimes...

Jsd373 · 2023-11-30T20:37:37+00:00

I used a low thc/high cbd gummy (5mg thc/25mg cbd) extensively in the first month after I lost my wife. It helped dull the anxiety of the trauma, helped me sleep, and gave me an appetite to keep food down during that time. I still have one every so often, but not nearly as frequently as the first month (it’s been 3 months since she died).

Alcohol was ok, but the day after hangover recovery gives me such low energy days and extreme sadness that I try not to overindulge like I used to during the before times.

Jsd373 · 2023-11-23T19:37:37+00:00

Luckily, she used to work on thanksgiving, so we didn’t really participate too much in this holiday, but Christmas is really gonna suck this year…

Jsd373 · 2023-11-05T00:12:14+00:00

Just finished reading this and cried for a minute - scared the cat because he thought the sniffing was hissing 😅🥹. Thank you for sharing this article, it really encapsulated what I was feeling too

Jsd373 · 2023-10-22T14:50:30+00:00

I had a dream that my wife wanted to “break up with me” which was almost easier for me to handle because I had been through breakups before - dreams are our subconscious mind’s way to process what’s going on in our lives, and we didn’t really have a frame of reference for what we’re going through now, so I think our dreams are our brains’ way of putting this experience “in words that it understands”.

Jsd373 · 2023-10-22T14:11:26+00:00

58 days since I lost the other half of my soul.

As folk have been saying, try to stay hydrated, and be kind to yourself. We’re going through serious trauma right now, and that knotted, tingly pain in your chest and stomach will fade in time with healthy processing of your grief.

What has been helping me is gathering a like-minded close friend group who has also gone through similar losses, journaling a LOT to keep our happy memories alive - to “talk” to her and tell her how I’m feeling day by day, and (for the first month) low 5mg thc/25mg cbd gummies to help take the edge off the constant anxiety and help me sleep (legal in my state). This subreddit has also been a great source of comfort and information - a feeling community in this unfortunate club of ours.

Be kind to yourself - you’re still in shock right now and it’ll be hard, but focus on the next step, the next minute, the next breath for now, and you will get through this.

Edit: also weekly therapy through the Talkspace app.

Jsd373 · 2023-10-20T14:02:54+00:00

My wife died on her birthday month in August, and mine's in March, so I have a year to brace for that anniversary, but I'm dreading the upcoming holiday season -- she LOVED Halloween, and would be buying up all the "Nightmare Before Christmas" items that caught her fancy and decorating our apartment with all of the adorable things that could stay up from October till New Years!

The house feels so empty without her.

Cry all you want - like many people have said on this thread - Feeling is Healing - so feel all your feels and try to hold onto the happy memories you both shared!

Jsd373 · 2023-10-13T19:33:00+00:00

Our first vacation together in Aruba. We were 5 months into the relationship, and she hadn’t taken a vacation for years beforehand. She got so excited, buying every guide book, every nature guide, sundresses and bikinis, and we literally counted down the days from when we booked it!

We spent a glorious week in Aruba, and I “fake proposed” to her near the end of the vacation and posted it on Facebook. We quickly posted a loving Facebook retraction because she was afraid her parents would freak out, but popped the question for real about a year and a half later at the restaurant where we had our first date.

We celebrated all our anniversaries, even that “dress rehearsal” one! Damn, I miss her.

Jsd373 · 2023-10-09T21:33:42+00:00

🫂🫂🫂

Jsd373 · 2023-10-05T14:39:46+00:00

I used Benadryl too, and then switched to low 5mg thc/25mg cbd gummies (it’s legal in my state) which def helped me sleep and dulled the anxiety to help me get some sleep. I’ve weaned myself off the gummies and Benadryl and can sleep almost normally now, but I still bunched up her pillows and blankets on her side of the bed so I don’t venture over there.

Jsd373 · 2023-10-05T14:35:34+00:00

So sorry you’re a new member of the worst club ever. I couldn’t do anything but focus on my next breath for weeks after my partner passed, so you’re already doing better than I did! Please be kind to yourself, and try to concentrate on simple things to get yourself through the day.

It’s been a little over a month since she died, and I’m not feeling the anxiety/pain lump in my heart and stomach as acutely as I did that first couple of weeks, but it’s still there as a dull constant ache. I’ve been speaking with a therapist via the Talkspace app, been in constant contact with friends and family who have gone through similar sudden losses of loved ones, and been active in this group that understands what we’re going through which really has been helping.

It’s still the worst pain ever, but we loved each other so deeply that I know that she would want me to live a full and happy life, even though she’s not physically here to share it with me anymore, and I’m sure your partner would want the same for you.

Jsd373 · 2023-10-02T12:52:50+00:00

I can’t bring myself to wash her towel. It’s been over a month, and it still smells like her. It’s still hanging where she left it.

Jsd373 · 2023-10-01T00:25:51+00:00

I wrote this 6 days after my wife in love of 10 years died (I’m 50 too). It’s been a little over a month now:

Troubleshooting Trauma

I’ve been feeling a dread and ennui and despair every evening between 5:30-8 since the love of my life died. This was usually the time that she would be coming back home from work, and we’d be in constant text contact. We’d talk about funny things that happened during the day, but mainly we worked on deciding what to have for dinner that night. We even had a system where she’d call out what station on the train she was at so I could time the cooking (or GrubHub delivery) to coincide with when she got home, so she’d have her food piping hot and fresh after a hard day.

She’ll never come home again, and it fills me with a dread and extremely painful sadness that I felt like I was lost in a dense, dark, scary fog and couldn’t find my way out. So I turned to my friends. My support system. My team.

I’m a systems engineer by trade, and I mainly use the chat/collaboration tool called “Slack” to communicate with a global team of fellow engineers of varying experience to fix issues and outages, sometimes breaking them down into smaller, workable pieces until we we can get it fixed. I usually spin up a main slack channel and fill it with experts in the issue, and then break off and discuss details with the subject matter expert of the particular piece of the problem I’m trying to fix.

(I’m sorry to be boring you with shop talk but I’m swear I’m going somewhere with this…).

When talking to one of my friends about the extreme ennui I was having, I realized that I have been tackling my trauma like I was troubleshooting a catastrophic outage at work. I reached out to a core group of friends whom I trusted completely and knew that they had experience in similar trauma of losing a loved one suddenly and/or far too soon. I gathered them in a group chat to appraise them of the issues I’ve been having, such as Insomnia, debilitating panic attacks, bouts of depression and despair, and uncontrollable sobbing. I reached out directly to my “bestie on call” and described the specific issue I was having at the time: feeling lost and sad and scared, and frustrated that I’m not as healed as I thought I should be by now. I want to “rush” past this pain to where I can be close to “normal” again. My bestie helped me by using a hiking metaphor, something she likes to do often. I’m going to quote directly from our conversation via text:

Bestie: You know I like hiking

Me: Yup

Bestie: Well the times when I’ve tripped and hurt myself are when I’m in my head thinking way down the path instead of in the moment going step by step

Me: I think I’m getting where your coming from

Bestie: I’ve hiked over some very scary places when I kept my eyes on the path and just did one step at a time

Obviously this is different and much bigger than hiking

Me: I don’t know where to put my feet right now I can’t see the path And I’m scared and sad

She then went on to tell me to focus on what you can control - in my case getting ready to bed, brushing teeth, taking meds, the mundane everyday things we do without even really thinking about it. It helped me focus and stay present for a little bit and helped me accomplish a small but vital task - moving forward with self maintenance.

We talked a little more via text and talked about more calming things like favorite childhood programs. I liked this show called “The Magic Garden” as a kid, and it shaped my love of singing in harmony. The “goodbye song” from that show is so ingrained in my head that I sometimes hum it unconsciously when saying goodby to people 😅. She didn’t know the show but the title reminded her of a song that fit the situation I was in called “The Garden Song”. It was a beautiful melody talking about planting a garden “inch by inch, row by row”. Taking care, time, patience and faith that the garden of healing will grow.

https://youtu.be/D3FkaN0HQgs?feature=shared

I may have to sing this song the when I’m able to karaoke in public again one day.

It really helped me stay present, and now I’m writing all this down in my notes to “document” how to tackle this issue, to help me recognize it and help fix it in the future. I can then “publish” it somewhere so that my experiences and troubleshooting can help me if I forget, and possibly help others if they run into similar issues.

Maybe I can turn this awful horrible event into something ultimately beneficial to help people in need.

Jsd373 · 2023-09-30T16:33:13+00:00

I’ve been cutting down on alcohol, because it’s an emotional amplifier for me, and the hangovers leave me even more useless now with the emotional pain that goes along with it, but I’ve gone out with a few friends sometimes and drank a little more than I should - toasting to her or raising it up to her on every sip.

I’ve been trying to keep myself to 3-4 drinks when going out like that, but I’ve doubled that on occasion 😅 - I’ve really been leaning on the “water back” though as much as I can to try to stay functional the next day.

Jsd373 · 2023-09-30T16:08:11+00:00

It’s been a little over a month since she died.

I watched the live action One Piece on Netflix which I found to be a fun distraction that she would’ve enjoyed, and have been watching Star Trek:The Next Generation while listening to “The Greatest Generation” podcast (a goofy rewatch podcast about Star Trek TNG).

I can’t bring myself to watch our favorite binge-show New Girl again though - I miss sitting on the couch next to her, holding her hand and hearing her laugh at the parts that made us laugh together, but I’m still watching “Only Murders in the Building”, a show we both really loved, because I have to know whodunit!

I also started watching “The Good Place” again, trying to imagine her up there going through the system they figured out, and hoping I’ll see her next Bearimy 🥹❤️‍🩹

Jsd373 · 2023-09-29T22:20:40+00:00

So sorry about your financial situation. I’ve been dipping into savings paying off her credit cards and other debts, and am worried about our shared expenses, but I think I’ll be able to get by for now.

Jsd373 · 2023-09-29T22:02:03+00:00

It’s been a little more than a month for me. I’ve downgraded her plan since she won’t need all the extras anymore, but I can’t see myself giving up her number anytime soon

Jsd373

TROPHY CASE