Waves of sorrow and comfort

It's no secret that the last 36 hours have been pretty difficult at times.

Like when I walked through the door for the first time since Chassis was put to sleep yesterday morning...and when I realized that there would be no night time walk just before bed.

The thing is, I'm aware of my feelings much more than I ever have been. I think before (as an adult), when I was faced with something that would be painful, I would eat to numb the pain. Or maybe drink a beer or two.

But yesterday, I did neither.

I cried (a lot). I talked on the phone with family and friends (a lot). And I slept (not a lot).

I awoke around 6 PM when I was famished - and I should've been. I hadn't eaten anything since 7 AM that morning. I ate more than I probably would've - but that was more due to me being so hungry than anything else.

I did recognize that I wanted to keep eating. In fact, I wanted to eat every morsel of food that had ever brought me comfort. But we didn't have what I wanted in the house...and I felt too miserable to put on a bra and walk outside. It would've meant changing out of my PJs and that just wasn't going to happen. It seemed like that would take too much effort.

So I laid down again. And I did something I hadn't done in decades.

I sucked my thumb.

I used to suck my thumb when I was a kid. In fact, as pathetic as it is, I sucked my thumb until I was in 4th grade and my parents installed a medieval torture device of sorts in my mouth. It was basically a retainer that had SPIKES on the roof of my mouth...so that if I put my thumb up there, it would poke it and hurt.

Nice.

But it worked - I stopped sucking my thumb.

Until yesterday.

The thing is, I found myself strangely UNcomforted by the sucking of my thumb. Here was the thing I had done for hours at a time when I was a kid (and really, my weight issues emerged shortly after 4th grade) to comfort myself.

And it didn't work. It didn't feel comfortable or comforting. In fact, it just felt like everything didn't fit.

So I cried some more and cuddled a stuffed animal and tried to fall asleep.

Strange, really. That the two things that used to give me comfort and shelter from my sorrow didn't work.

Yesterday, I had to develop new skills. I was sad. I was lonely. But I got through it.

I sat with my feelings...without my thumb, without alcohol, and without food. Just me and my intense feelings. It was, to my best recollection, a first.

And you know what? It really wasn't as bad as I feared it would've been. Somehow me acknowledging my feelings - fully - made the tides of sorrow more manageable than I had imagined. Sure, the first wave was a doozy. But by the eleventh wave, I had hope that the wave wouldn't last long. I knew that the sadness would ease just as I know it will come back.

It's a cycle - like everything else. And although I am still very, very sad when the waves hit, it's something that I am getting through.

Your comments mean more to me than I can express. And just like how the waves of sadness wash over, when I check my email and see the kind words that you wrote, the comfort washes over me too.

So thank you.


P.S. TinaM had asked what happened...and I guess I forgot that I had written about her before...just not on this blog. I wrote about her neurological disease on my other blog - and if you'd like, you can read it here. But basically on Monday night, around 1:30 AM, Joe and I realized that Chassis could not and would not lay down. For a dog that spends about 21-22 hours out of the day sleeping, not being able to lay down and get relief from muscle spasms was exhausting. She was stressed, uncomfortable, exhausted, and clearly unhappy. It was a long road to get to this point (the previous post was written almost two years ago), but I know that I did the right thing. In the end, the vet, the vet tech, and two others were in the room with me crying right along side of me.