Numbing Out

It is 1a.m. in the morning. I am sitting outside looking at the Japanese maple that we have strung with lights. The fountain beneath the tree is not running and the lights make the tiny white flowers in the garden glow. It seems peaceful out here...but in HERE it is sadness and grief and anguish and heartache and desperation and utter pain.

So I can't sleep...nothing new here...totally exhausted but my mind won't turn off. I don't want to take Ambien and so I will wake up later this morning feeling hungover and tired...drag myself out of bed to play with my son. My husband is going back to work next week. Somethings gotta give because this pattern of no sleep + grief + having to function with my son is not going to work.

I don't drink alcohol or rather I haven't in the last year....and before that it was maybe 4 drinks a year. I don't smoke or have any particularly bad vices that I can throw myself into except self hate, blame and general mind fucking of myself over the death of our daughter. At first ALL I wanted to do was sleep; I didn't want to wake up because the nightmare of Camille dying didn't go away except when I slept. Now I can't sleep and during the day I just don't have time to grieve. My son needs me to play baseball, read books, cook food, tickle him, play hide and seek and generally mother him. Instead of finding a space for the thoughts in my head and the ripped open wounds of my soul during the day I pack it away for nighttime. Then the night comes and

Holy Crap the most GIANT Opossum just jumped up and started drinking from the fountain! CRAZY! I kind of want to catch it...it looks kind of like a miniature rodent of unusual size....Distracted...

So the night comes and instead of actually facing the swelling of grief...I have started watching TV and movies...now this might not seem so strange to many but I am not the type to turn the TV on. I am a huge book lover but I can't read books right now, I can't concentrate. I did just read The Exact Replica of the Figment of My Imagination which was phenomenal and I felt like she was writing about my experience minus France...Anyway NUMBING OUT...watching TV...I guess I am trying to escape. It's not that I don't want to face Camille's death, I face it every day in my heart and soul BUT sometimes it is just SO EXHAUSTING being this SAD ....ALL THE TIME!

So I watch TV or a movie and I get through the evening after Kai is asleep...and then I can't sleep. Why? because now I am sad and I have to face all the sadness I haven't been focusing on all day...What a SHIT cycle. The other bad thing about this is I am a person who needs a lot of sleep. I don't function well under normal circumstances with too little sleep. So now I am grieving and broken and sleep deprived.

I have read on different blogs about doing creative things to remember my daughter. My mother is a professional artist and I grew up in a artistic house. I do art projects with my son all the time...but I feel paralyzed by my grief. I don't know how to be creative in the face of this devastation. I have so many thoughts swirling in my head with no direction...I just kind of sit and stare and think and think and think. Yeah paralyzed by sadness. I can't make phone calls, I can't do art, I can't read...everything seems like so much effort.

You know how when you stand in the soft wet sand at the beach and let the water crash around your ankles, if you just stand in one spot your feet sink deeper and deeper into the sand? I feel like my soul is being washed over by the waves while standing still. I don't want to numb out but I am not sure exactly how to proceed. Maybe if I got more sleep...I would know how to proceed.