Dealing with Loss

This may be the most difficult thing I've ever tried to write. And if you're reading this, I finally hit the "publish" button.

I will be the first to admit that I've lived a pretty charmed life when it comes to loss. Until losing my father in 2016, I'd never known any profound sadness and had never even remotely felt any depression. In fact, there are many times I wrote about my extreme optimism and my feeling that I might not even be ABLE to be depressed. I think that may be one of the main reasons it took me so long to realize I wasn't just dealing with depression associated with grief. I honestly thought that once I got past the one year mark I would start to come out of my funk. I was wrong. It got worse and there were days that I would only move from my bed to make sure my mother was taken care of and had something to eat. Then I would head back to my cocoon  so I could hide from and protect myself from feeling anything but the dull ache in my heart.


At the end of March, my 18 year old nephew was taken from us suddenly and the nature of his death was fairly violent. Instead of falling deeper into depression, I was suddenly out of my funk and moving with a purpose again. I knew I had to live every bit of life that I had because my nephew no longer could. I felt as though I had been pulled from the flames of a burning building! My life had been saved from the downward spiral of depression and I felt young....as though I had been reborn. That feeling lasted about 3 week and I was unaware that I was operating on adrenaline from the sudden shock. As the adrenaline high subsided, I began to spiral  back down into my deep depression but as the days and weeks passed, I could tell something was different. The most noticeable was my anger. At first I just thought I was finally moving through my grief but I was noticing that this anger came with an aggression that made this life-long pacifist want to throat punch or put my knee to a groin. I felt like I would be better if I could just destroy things. Swipe everything off the table and shelves, upend all the furniture and smash all windows and TVs. This anger tinged with violence started to scare me because I couldn't control when I felt or for how long. As the months passed, I also developed irrational fears that wold bring on anxiety attacks. That was what made me start to think I was going crazy. As one who has always been level-headed and calm, it seems 100 times worse because friends and some family would suddenly find themselves on the receiving end of one of the panic attacks and I had neither an explanation for my bizarre behavior  nor an excuse for my inability to control or calm the attack once it had started.

This past November after a particularly emotional weekend away from my day-to-day life, I felt bombarded with every type of emotion. Most of them were good, but a few were difficult and sad but it was probably the first time I had allowed myself to fully feel ANY type of emotion since February 2016. Once those flood gates were opened, I couldn't staunch the flow and that's when I thought about fading away....ceasing to exist. That's when I knew something was very wrong and beyond my control.

It wasn't easy, but I went to see a therapist and after a brief explanation of the crazy and uncontrollable things I was feeling. After 15 minutes the therapist told me I had Acute Stress Disorder.

What is Acute Stress Disorder?  It turns out that it's a mild form of PTSD. In an instant I felt ridiculous....like some frivolous little girl. How on earth could I have anything even remotely resembling PTSD? I kept thinking......that can't be. I'm not even the one who lost their son. I'm not the one who is living like half or them was removed when their spouse died. I was just a girl who had always been incredibly stable and sane who had lost her father and her nephew.

My therapist sent me home with an assignment to read about Acute Stress Disorder. As soon as I read a textbook definition, I knew that he was 100% correct with his diagnosis and I felt just a little bit of the craziness leave my weary mind. I have a lot of work to do and the worst part of my panic disorder is the impending sense of loss that I feel looming constantly, just waiting to swoop in and take away another person from my life. It's likely this feeling will not even begin to subside until after April. My subconscious perceives a pattern of loss [my father in Feb 2016; my nephew in March 2017, and ??? in April 2018] Just typing that has my anxiety building and I can feel my limbs shaking as my heart races. 

To any of you who have been on the receiving end of one of these attacks, I am trying to get to each of you personally to apologize and explain. For now, when I feel as though I'm about to lose someone, I focus on the type of loss I'm panicked over. As my therapist points out.....all loss besides death can be regained, found, added back to you. And focusing on the difference in the types of loss have made it much more manageable in my mind.

At times this diagnosis still seems a bit ridiculous but I know I already feel better than I did and I might get through this without losing too many of my marbles. Be kind to each other and be mindful that everyone has something unseen to others that's a burden they must bear on their own each day.