Eight weeks after the accident…
My anger stays inside. The anger that everyone talks about, that all the books and counselors say is “normal” for a grieving person, has no where to go, so it stays inside, winding me ever tighter. I find myself short-tempered, waspish, mean-spirited.
I do not want to be this way!
Behaviors become habit all too easily. It is too easy to use my grief as an excuse for ugly behavior, and I mustn’t let it.
These waves of pain will not stop, nor should I try to stop them (in spite of my instinctive desire to stop pain). They will ease and slow in their own time. What I must try to do is to not fight the waves, to allow them to wash through me – to cleanse me.
Let me relax with the pain.
This constant, ever-tightening, winding up of my spirit – like a rubber band in a toy airplane – may snap me at some point. I must not allow that to happen. My goal is to drop my shoulders, to ease my tension and release that rubber band. As a friend says, “to find the goodness” … even if it is only the solace of free-flowing tears.
To be at ease with what I cannot change.
So easy to write… so nearly impossible to do.
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Ten weeks today…
I find I am very short-tempered often; that I have little patience with things or people. Is this the anger coming out? Am I bitter toward life? Why do I growl so easily in unjustified, irrational irritation. I don’t like it, and I don’t like the “me” that is showing up lately.
People tell me it is “understandable,” but really it’s not. I must revisit the pain and feel the hurt so I don’t have to hide behind anger. Anger is so ugly.
I’ve been saying this all along, but it is so hard to do…
I think of Ava constantly, except perhaps when I am at work. When I’m home, she is so very absent. So when some little thing, like chocolate in the freezer, reminds me of her, it chokes me completely and I break down. It is easier by far to snarl and lash out, but that solves nothing, hurts others and ultimately makes me feel worse.
Anger is not healing.
