Forty three, fatherless, and floundering

 I am 43 today. It is 14 months and 19 days since I lost my father, one of my closest friends. I do not, in any way, feel celebratory, excited, enthused, or adult.

Truth to tell, I am floundering. Barely able to function in any kind of rational-appearing way, dragging myself around daily chores and work with zero engagement, unable to get interested or invested in things I normally am extremely passionate about. Not what one would call “effective functioning”. All the well meaning and often loving messages from friends, loved ones, and well wishers today is not helping.

What do you tell people though? Don’t wish me on my birthday because every wish makes me want to sit down and bawl my eyes out? That I feel hollow and disconnected and dissociated and dismal just getting through each day? That “celebrations” are particularly bad and sharp in terms of the agony of absence? That august is probably the worst month of the year for that – what with three birthdays, including his, falling during the month? That I don’t seem to be as “strong” as some of the people around me and am NOT dealing well -Even more than a year later? That everyone thinking “it’s time she got over it and got back to the business of living” may be right, but I can’t seem to be able to do it?

Right now, I have no idea if it will ever get any easier. If there will ever be a day when my first thought in the morning and my last thought at night will not be about this loss, this absence. When I will no longer constantly hold conversations with him, in my head and out loud. When random, trivial, unnoticed-by-anyone-else things will no longer trigger tears and physical pain in the chest. When I will no longer be supplying - in my mind - every lame, unfunny, hilarious only to him, pj that he would have made in any particular circumstance. I just don’t know. I hope so… but time, so far, has not proved to be the great and effective healer it is vaunted to be.

So far, I am NOT better, I don’t feel any more able to deal, any more of an adult in charge of my life, any “better”. I spent 11.50pm last night to 12.30 am this morning bawling my head off. I constantly dream him alive, and wake to the knowledge of his absence. I had no idea grief could be this … This debilitating, draining, exhausting constant state of being that turns you into a zombie and sucks away everything energetic, enthusiastic in you. This monster that turns you into a bit of one, where your people no longer know how to deal with you and where nothing “normal” seems to be normal anymore. Where you end up making everyone around you uncomfortable because they have no idea how to deal with your “overreactions” and mood swings.

So…yeah…. Happy birthday to me.