I continued to work on my ASPPA certification course that I am currently enrolled in, however, I found out pretty quick that my mind was just wandering, and I kept having to try to refocus. needless to say I wasn't getting much accomplished. I entertained the thought of letting my mind wander a bit, as I've been doing some seemingly endless work on deciphering what went wrong. It really just dawned on me how incredibly stressful of a year it was last year. I knew of everything that was going on as each piece came into play, but it seemed like I didn't have any time to reflect before the next thing happened. No wonder I couldn't hold my shit together, no wonder I had a ton of issues with stress, severe brain fog, disorganization, communication, sorting feelings out. I've been searching for a reason,it just seemed like it snapped into place for me today.
The beginning of the year saw the passing of my Memere (my fathers mother.) Where I wasn't all too close with that side of the family (due to distance,) I was saddened to see her pass. Shortly after that my girlfriend and her kids moved out of the house due to a number of things, but the major reason at the time was due to a reactionary decision I made which was purely based on anxiety. Was this the only reason why our relationship failed? No, it wasn't. Could our relationship have been saved even if we tried to work through this situation? I'm not sure. Why the fuck didn't we go to couples counseling? I don't know....
As I write this tomorrow is the 1 year anniversary since I lost one of my most favorite people in my life. My Grandmother. After a rapid decline in her physical and cognitive ability she passed away in her sleep finally succumbing to Parkinson's disease. it was a traumatic thing for me to see this happen, and hurt my heart every time that I saw her. I was incredibly saddened to lose her, but I was happy that she was no longer suffering. I look at the photo on my wall daily of me walking her over the sand dunes in Florida. This was the last time that I saw her where she was close to the person that I once knew. Every time I look at this I see it as a metaphor as helping to escort her to the afterlife.
Things in the family had been high stress surrounding my Grandmother as my Grandfather had been stirring shit within the family for the previous two years, pitting both sides of the family against each other. Two months after my grandmothers passing we lost him. What he actually died from is hard to say. He was hospitalized due to complications of heart failure, however, he contracted covid while in the hospital, so that may officially be his cause of death. I haven't seen his death certificate, so I have no way to tell what the actual cause was. Even though things were bad within the family for the last two years, his passing still impacted me. He loved his grandkids and he was always good to me growing up. He had a lot of anger going through him those last two years due to the split between him and my grandmother. Being 88 years old, and living in an apartment alone, he had nothing better to do than become bitter and resentful. I can somewhat relate to his situation as I had a lot of bitterness and resentment during my divorce as well. The difference between him and I is that I worked through the anger, and have not let is over take my life and consume me.
No sooner did the funerals for both of my grandparents take place we had to put our dogs down. Spanky contracted cancer, and Lola had the start of respiratory failure. We opted to put them down before they suffered to much. you can read more about Spanky if you want in another blog post that I have. He was a great friend to me, and even though the last 5 years of his life I wasn't able to keep him in my care, i looked forward to the times that I was able to see him. he was a great companion over the years.
If we fast forward to the end of the year. We found out that we lost a baby, my little girl who I always wanted. This was just soul crushing. This lead directly into my brother in law having a Major stroke which almost took his life. The doctors still don't know how he is alive. That rocked our family, and watching my kid sister have to go through something like that while I am sitting 1600 miles away was hard for me. I was powerless to really do anything to help her at the time. ( I will be going down at the end of next month to help her with my nephews.)
Each of these I saw, and felt, and accepted as they came. Due to the immense stress stemming from tension in relationships, loss, grief, By the time the summer came around I was in a heavy brain fog, which was effecting my daily life, my work life, friendships, relationships & and we hadn't even reached the 2 other major events of the year. Let's take a quick look at how this breakdown.
Memere dies + My family moving out + Grandmother dies + Grandfather dies + family dogs put down + house flooding+ Losing my baby + almost losing my brother in law + Depression + Anxiety + Job stressors + Fatherhood struggles + Financial struggles = no. fucking. wonder.
This was a crushing year, this would have been enough to cripple most men i would think. I spent all of last year beating myself up, severely, guilt, sadness, anger...... Did I make some rash decisions, yes I did. Do I wish I would have made some different choices & decisions? I absolutely do 100%. I admit and I accept that. However, I need to realize and accept that this was an incredibly difficult year (Even harder than the year I got divorced,) and I need to treat myself with some sort of tenderness and grace. stop beating myself up and forgive myself. How I didn't really put all of this together and add it up to see what this equated to is beyond me. I think I kept on moving forward as a coping mechanism. That's the only way that I could see how I made it through. Make it through one shitstorm before dealing with the next one. I'm really interested to see what my Therapist has to say about all of this on Wednesday. That's fucking heavy. I wish that others could recognize that....
Despite all of the loss and craziness that happened last year, I was at least still able to find some beauty. I enjoyed the weather last summer, I was able to start jogging and did it on a fairly consistent basis. Lost enough weight to no longer be borderline diabetic, Had a great time on our family vacation in Florida. I also shared an amazing weekend in NH with a beautiful person, in a beautiful place. I'm proud of myself for being able to see that, because sometimes when the going gets tough, and the stress, depression and anxiety kick in, it forces me to get into my head & then I focus on the negatives. Amongst all the death there was some beauty.
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