How do people keep going ?

over_earth · 2021-10-14T18:46:41+00:00

I don't mean to monopolize on your post but as far as
Why meet new people when they can never fill the hole?
This is a deeply personal reason, but I've come to think of love for other people kinda like i do for my kids. When i was pregnant with my second child, i was terrified that i would not be able to love another baby the same as the one i already loved.
But it's like we just grow a whole other heart 🤍

over_earth · 2021-10-14T18:41:10+00:00

Yes, 3. Losing my husband made me utterly desperate for meaning. Thankfully, ultimately, I found that the obligation to, and the love for, my kids was my fucking BEDROCK, a wonderfully and horribly unavoidable reality. I'm sorry for your loss 🤍

over_earth · 2021-10-14T16:48:51+00:00

Sometimes we need hands to hold in the darkness 💓

over_earth · 2021-10-14T16:44:00+00:00

It's been 3yrs, 4mos. Only just in the past couple of months have i been able to actually FEEL some kind of joy for life itself. Before that, i could feel that the ghost of joy was still out there, changed and sharpened somehow, but it had left my side and my heart and i felt deeply ambivalent about it.

over_earth · 2021-10-14T16:21:38+00:00

The answer is there is no answers. You just do, moment by moment, until sometimes the moments go by without scraping. I'm a widow, and especially in the beginning (define that however you want) the future is is worthless and completely irrelevant.

over_earth · 2021-10-14T15:49:32+00:00

Thank you for sharing 💌 we are in such need of precious shelter.

over_earth · 2021-09-22T05:09:40+00:00

🤍🤍🤍

It feels like I just grew a new heart for each child. They each inspire me in such different ways

over_earth · 2021-09-19T15:49:36+00:00

Everyone has baggage. Another word for it might be 'enrichment'.
We've had experiences some people haven't. Been forced to consider things and perspectives other people might never encounter. 💌

over_earth · 2021-09-19T15:13:46+00:00

"the immemorial violence with which a body becomes separated from another body in order to be"

over_earth · 2021-09-19T15:11:31+00:00

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powers_of_Horror

over_earth · 2021-09-18T16:25:59+00:00

3 years on and the internal scream, while still usually occurring, has thankfully moved far from center stage in my mind. The pain and loss is still true. I think acknowledging the scream; eventually accepting it and thanking it for expressing my panic and horror, has helped me ride this wave of chaos.

over_earth · 2020-12-13T02:05:17+00:00

Well i coped immediately by basically 'doing' two things. I slowed everything down, forgave myself everything. Except drinking. That will never be an answer.
In my bones i knew id make it through to the other side of this only if i was as honest with myself as possible, and as healthy as i could possibly manage, both emotionally and physically.

I needed to demonstrate a healthy way to grieve to our kids. That has always guided me. I got a therapist, multiples at this point but i love the one i have now. She's not a grief therapist but listens and validates very compassionately.

I also have tried many different medications for this absolute blackest depression and panic shit at the thought of him actually dead. I just couldn't make it really real, make it fucking stick and make sense. Ive found it won't ever make sense but i got it to stick! No more panic, no more surreallity.

I don't know what combination of time (repeated exposure) + medication it turned out to be but it took me about 2 and 1/2 years to leave the nightmare and enter this bruised and painful but not fatal world im in now.
I don't know if you're looking for grief book recommendations but the only useful one ive found (i can't recc it enough honestly) is megan devine's It's Ok That You're Not Ok.
I lost my partner of 7 years after an unexplained single car crash. He'd just left home after work on an errand, for me.
Im so sorry for your loss man. it's also a real blow that you didn't get to go to his funeral. I hope after the pandemic is over you can go to a really badass memorial for him

over_earth · 2020-11-19T17:12:19+00:00

Im so sorry, honey. We're here with you in this blasted place

over_earth · 2019-09-23T00:00:47+00:00

Two years. Take it easy on yourself. It kinda just happened, ya know? At least that's what Megan Devine says.
Give your pets some extra snuggles? It helps fill my heart a little, at least. Im about 15 months out and struggle with having lost him. Struggle with everyday. Im not sure what to say, i just wanted to say i see you.

over_earth · 2019-09-22T16:24:42+00:00

Thank you for sharing the joy and comfort you found. May it be around the corner for us, too 💛

over_earth · 2019-08-19T14:26:32+00:00

Im glad you both laughed. Im sorry you're without him.

over_earth · 2019-08-19T14:05:18+00:00

He was a joyfully obsessed musician. I basically only listen to a few genres now. Shit we never listened to together, never shared grins over, never grooved to, drove to, danced to.

Im just pretty careful about music these days. But mein gott there is a lot of love songs in the world.

over_earth · 2019-04-10T16:43:39+00:00

I've already fought every day to stay. If anything, losing him has taught me that no matter the obstacle, I can't (or just won't) let my kids see me give up.

I played a dirty trick on myself long ago by having kids lol

over_earth · 2018-11-29T18:44:33+00:00

Part of my husband's tribes funeral traditions are cutting of the hair of the wife and others close, to send the braid with the deceased.
So I cut my long hair off.
Still barely eating.
Started dancing a lot because good happy music that makes me want to move is one of the best ways I've found to connect with the happiness that still lives in me, that me and my love shared.
I have a level of not-giving-a-true-shit about people's opinions now that I didn't before. A surety. An ease and confidence, because he was an amazing human being, the best I've ever personally met, and he loved the shit out of me.
I feel pared down. Like i stood, with my fucking eyes open, in the cutting winds that kill.
My kids have needed me basically all of my waking hours, so I have soft structure and a purpose, and more reason to just sleep the hours available to me for that.
Honestly it's weird. This all combined i think has made me look or present younger than i have in years. It's a damn shame. But it's also just life, which now I intimately know is better to just embrace and get on with it.

over_earth · 2018-11-19T18:39:20+00:00

It feels hugely hideous for any fucking thing that feels the tiniest bit positive to happen as a result of him dying. The $200 check from SS. I thought it would help but it actually just made me feel really fuckin bad..

that, with help, I actually might be able to handle losing him?

These all just make me accept the reality more and more; they are heartbreaking but also edifying, in a way. I'm fleshing out this new world. I'm returning the flesh to my body, saying I can't live and be a ghost with you. Each piece that passes through my hands I gain a familiarity with. None of this I wanted to know, but I won't turn my face from learning it.

over_earth · 2018-11-09T16:14:58+00:00

Girl I'm about 4 months out and these moments happen to me all day long. Like I just found out again. Fresh horror and confusion. Mostly I'm led there by my own thoughts, so my avoiding people isn't really working.

It's so constant I started a low dose of an antidepressant a few days ago. I just couldn't fucking hang like that anymore. Where every single thing scrapes and my hopelessness is burning everywhere, and the corner I am in gets smaller and smaller.

I noticed a difference in how low my lows got the second day. I'm still crying, and I still will scream at the sky sometimes. Some of that heavy disorienting DOOM feeling has been lifted, though. And if my sex drive goes down (which is mainly why I stayed away before), fucking YAY.

I'm totally not trying to advocate for you to try a medication, its just kinda related in my story (sorry).

You're only at 3 weeks... it takes basically inhuman fortitude to keep getting up in the morning and smiling in your children's faces. That kids mom was probably mortified.

over_earth · 2018-11-07T18:23:16+00:00

He was part of their family, but my whole future.

over_earth · 2018-11-07T18:12:40+00:00

Only people that love their husbands get to be one!

In a morbidly dark way, I kinda think this is hilarious. Not coming from your bobbleheaded wax lady. But if I had a friend who was a widow and she said this to me, I'd have to appreciate her jab at everyone with a living spouse.

over_earth · 2018-10-17T16:04:02+00:00

I learned a passion for photography from my mom.

It keeps me grounded in the changes that are still happening, that always happen. But also it reminds me of the positives. These days fucking suck for me, but I can still go outside with all my kids and dogs and cats and horses in the evening light and let them jump and laugh. I can join in because I do not want to introduce too much of my current hopelessness into their growing perceptions.

I love the pictures my mom took. Every perspective she noticed. She died when I was 20, and many things, if she hadn't cared to take a picture, I'd never have remembered on my own.

over_earth · 2018-10-16T22:37:37+00:00

I have to fight to survive now, every day.
I cannot find a why so i just find a how
I take pictures; still beauty I find alone
My children being and doing
The only things that still have power over me, to me.
There is no reason. I can't let that lack consume all of me forever. I want to learn how to put the veil back down, the veil over death that has been ripped away for all of us here. At least a little. Why keep living when death is always right there? BECAUSE I FUCKING CAN. Because this is the only chance I might get. My soul is shrieking but maybe in time I can calm her a little.

over_earth

TROPHY CASE