I'm not even sure where to start other than one word at a time. It's no secret to anyone that 2010 was a difficult year to endure. It started with 2 very traumatic events - the death and burial of both of my parents together and my husband's deployment. Four days after standing in the bitter cold morning of January watching my parents' caskets being slid into their burial site, I stood in the bitter snow at the armory and kissed my husband off to 4 1/2 months of pre-deployment training (he came home for a week before deploying for a year). The grief and trauma of losing my parents was so great - then Rich left and I fell deeper into the black hole. It's this hole that I still struggle to come out of 2 1/2 years later.
I became sad and lonely during that year with no one here to lean on. My siblings and children were just as broken and traumatized that we couldn't even lean on each other. My best friend, next door, was consumed with her life: home, children, work, going back to school and studying in any free time. My co-workers were indifferent. As a NG family member, our unit is small and in different geographical locations - I couldn't turn to the FRG...I WAS the FRG leader. I wanted to be held while I cried. I wanted desperately to talk and
scream through my pain to someone...anyone. I wanted to lean on my
parents, my husband, my family, my friend; there were no shoulders, no
arms, no ears to hear me. I was alone.
I was able to turn to my blog and blog friends; without that venue I just don't think I could have held on to the lip of that black hole for as long as I did (thank you).
After the shock of death and deployment began to wear off and my new reality began to take root, I felt abandoned and left to drift alone without any direction at all. I was a child abandoned by her parents, a Christian abandoned by her God, a wife abandoned by her husband, a friend abandoned by her closet friend and a family member abandoned by her family in a way. Nothing felt RIGHT, nothing felt familiar..nothing felt normal. I no longer belonged in my life. The sense of loss and abandonment from my parents, God, Rich, my best friend, even my family was so great. It didn't matter that it couldn't be helped...by anyone, the effects lingered and grew in to something more that I could shake most days.
I struggled to rationalize the unrational. Today I struggle with a sense of insecurity and fear that I never experienced before, that stems from that abandonment feeling. When I let my mind take me back to those long days and that long year, my heart races and my mind becomes hazy - the anxiety just grips my throat.
The feelings of abandonment led to resentment, anger, bitterness.
Peace.
(I have turned off comments..I just need to be able to get 'this' out there in order to find a way to deal with it. Personal comments can be emailed to me)
