I think there's an exhaustion in grief. My husband has been dead for over 13 months and my mother not quite a month, and somehow, no matter how committed one is to take care of oneself, exhaustion is a big factor.
I don't mean I need to nap, because I am not sure I have had one nap since my husband's death, but at the end of a day I can barely get myself to bed, not to mention that sometimes it comes across as 'I can't go on like this. I need a holiday!' But then I think, who wants to hear this sort of thing? No-one really does. So, I sort of just 'get over it' and get on with it.
For a few months now I have had no energy at all for dating. I am busy doing what needs to be organised and achieved, and that's all the energy I have. If a person were to ask me, and it would be a very reasonable question to ask, 'Where would a relationship with me fit into your life?', I would be compelled to explain that there probably isn't a lot left over in my life for him right now.
It's the realisation that that would be the truthful answer that made me completely comfortable to end my dating efforts for now.
It's interesting, worth pondering, why the Universe gave me these challenges personally at the same time as the Universe gave us all economic and political challenges, such that we are fundamentally at a standstill.
I can, of course, prepare for a better time, be ready to leap, but right now, I am stymied. AI tells me not to let it get me down, 'don't fight with it' was the advice.
More than anything else, it's the physical toll - the doing the work of at the very least, two people, and knowing, that just like a line at the Immigration Department that never seems to shorten, so too, the list of things I need to accomplish remain never ending. I do try to celebrate the ending of a major task, but I can't take too long, because there's some other thing to do now.
The advice that no one does not give is to fit in some time for myself. Yoga is important for you, my youngest son will say. 'It's been a shit year, why not take yourself to India and rest?' a friend will suggest. 'Travel somewhere you haven't been, have a European fling' says another. Very gradually, I will get to that, but not before my ducks get somewhere vaguely close to a straight row.
It could be a little perfectionism or OCD, some might say, but I would rather work hard and reach a level of security and order than find myself thousands of miles away when something goes very wrong. The responsibility is on my shoulders, only mine. Learning how to carry that responsibility is an artform I haven't quite perfected.
Every day, I don't think there is an exception to this, I have a fantasy, usually first thing in the morning when I have no alternative but to simply comply with the situation I find myself in - strict men (and women) who see it as their duty to teach me that all that is required is one very simple thing - to obey them. I suppose you could say that the consequences of disobedience quickly convince me that obedience is the right route for me, but on the other hand, I am not thinking that thought in the fantasy. Very quickly indeed, I have honed the skill to not think, and simply to do as told, to accept, to comply, and neither to think of it as a good or bad thing. It is just the way it is. It is my life. I don't question it or wish it were some other way. It is the way. It just is.
So, you see, there's a spirituality to this daily fantasy of mine - a surrender, an acceptance, a living in the moment, that calms me and settles me and seems to be vital for me. I'd love to explore this in a real-life scenario with someone with great skill, but I am not sure where you find one of those, so until then, I fantasise on.
