8 Dec 2016
Read the f***ing manual, for the non-geeks reading.
I have a long-standing tendency to want to Get Things Right, a legacy of being a 'bright child' rewarded for exam performance who grew into an overeducated adult rewarded for solving other people's problems.
So grieving is no different. I want to Do It Properly. Not make mistakes. Get it right first time, so I don't have to do it again. I have been reading the books and Googling in search of enlightenment. But I do not recognise very much of what I read on those pages - they seem to be describing something completely different to how I feel. I just do not understand any of this. Why, for example, after three days of howling hell, am I sitting here feeling cheerful? I went into his room and didn't cry. I printed out some copies of his death certificate, the saddest piece of paper I have ever touched, and didn't cry. I am not crying while I write this. I even had a genuine laugh this afternoon, the first time I remember finding something funny in ages (so thanks, Boris Johnson and Teresa May, for performing what is probably your only genuinely humanitarian act).
I would like to enjoy this respite, but I can't, because of the fear of the return of the pain, which is almost as scary as the pain itself. This uncertainty is a struggle in itself. I recognise that I can't manage this process like I would a project, much as I long to be able to. Grief is inherently chaotic, it seems. I might be curled up on the bathroom floor sobbing uncontrollably in ten minutes' time. I might feel OK for days. I hated (although he hated it much more) not being in control during the cancer but I didn't realise that even after it was supposedly over, I still wouldn't have control of my life, that I would come to regard the very idea of control as a bleakly hilarious farce.
My therapist says to trust myself, trust my subconscious and my heart, trust her to guide me. Stop reading the f***ing manuals because there are no f***ing manuals. I know she is right. I remind myself that when he was dying, I deliberately did not read about anything to do with the death process or what I "should" be doing. I trusted myself to do what was right in any given moment and I believe (at least I do today) that I did so. If I could do that for him, why can't I now do it for myself? It is hard enough to do this without monitoring myself constantly.
