It feels as if all of a sudden, nothing is significant.
Aside from the people in my life.
When I first started to feel this feeling a few weeks ago, it worried me.
This new feeling was destroying my world.
It was as if I was no longer me.
I stopped caring.
Whether I would make a living.
Have a car I like.
Make others proud.
Impress.
Please.
Be liked. Approved. Chosen.
It all vanished. Gone.
From one day, to the next.
It was like someone went inside my heart and took out all the wanting.
All the wishing.
My mind was filled with this knowing of myself without the wishes.
Without the ambition.
Without wanting anything.
It was like my consciousness separated from my identity and I was able to see life without it.
I realized that the struggle to make my wishes come true created such an over busy life that I might as well have been dead.
I was alive inside an unlived life.
Just simply working for my future dreams.
And then it hit me.
I found its starting spot.
This working around the clock experience.
It was when I got my first full time job after he died.
I remember hating the job but loving how my mind was occupied all day and I didn’t cry as much as I would normally do.
It happened even from the first day.
I said to myself then, wow grief didn’t knock me out today.
And so it began, work helped ease the pain.
My brain got used to it.
I started to make work a default setting.
Meaning, it was automatic to choose work vs choosing life.
And even when I was no longer feeling desperately sad my brain was just used to working hard, so it went with it.
Now I know what happened to me.
I never made it after loss.
A shadow self was here.
A stand in.
I really believed that some parts of me survived.
But now I know that was never true.
Because I can’t spot Christina anywhere in the last 12 years.
I saw glimpses of her here and there, attempting reentries.
Making it in for a while.
But never all the way.
Nobody told me that life after any kind of loss is a complex and profoundly existential experience. (Click to tweet!)
And here I am now.
My first full life reentry.
A newborn.
Learning to walk again.
So…here’s to finding your way to a complete life reentry after loss.
It may take time. A year. Ten years. Maybe more.
Just don’t let the stand in live out the rest of your life.
You promise me?
With excitement for what’s to come,
Christina
PS. The new release of Second Firsts is approaching fast. Pre-order here: https://www.amazon.com/Second-Firsts-Step-Step-Guide/dp/1401957064/
PPS. Where Did You Go? has been reuniting people with their loved ones all over the world. My soul is so grateful. So beyond grateful.
Wow this is so spot on for me. I’ve had many losses back to back over a 10 year period that I’m numb. I think one day I’m doing great then the next not so much. Going through the motions of work and now I’m not sure work even helps. I’ve been contemplating a change in environment but know that it’s not the outside it’s the inside that need the self love and care. Its just getting to a point where I have the energy to do it. Thanks for the reminder
This. You have put into words exactly how I feel and why I react (or not) to life in general. Since 2010, I have lost my mother’s only brother/sibling, my grandmother, my mother-in-law and my husband. Work became my safe place because it left me no time to think….I got there early, left late and operated on auto pilot when dealing with the rest of my life. I didn’t care about “stuff”….material things, the yard, my house, none of the activities that I previously loved. So much of my identity was tied up in the things that I shared with my husband that I didn’t even know who I was anymore. Time, patient friends and a new love have helped me get where I am now which is happy in my new life. I have invented a new life that is different from the one that I had planned, but a wonderful place to be.