Nearing Nadir

The weekend is a day closer. I have had a terrible headache all day. I forgot to take an allergy pill but did after I got to work. I did my exercises, too.

I discovered have to stop taking the St. John's Wort, at least for a bit. My hair loss has escalated to worrisome proportions for me. I'm losing it at an rate that I feel is not normal. I see my doctor in a couple of weeks and will bring this up. But, I did research again on SJW and found hair loss is a side effect. I do not remember this being a problem when I took it over 10 years ago and I took it for several years! But I also was not taking other medications that also can cause hair loss. My BP medicines can cause this and I suspect it is possible that combinations may cause the problem to be worse. So, for now I'm taking it in the a.m. and will reduce that in a week or so.

I had to stop after that paragraph at work today because I got busy and the headache was just awful. When I came home I took an Imitrex. Only in the last 30 minutes have I felt any relief from that.

Tonight I am very bad. I can't watch movies very often anymore because I can't predict what will set off the flashbacks. No, they have not stopped. I'm just avoiding things that cause them. I happen to run across a Tommy Lee Jones movie. I have always loved to watch him in anything. He was dressed in a military dress green like they wore when we were in Germany. His build and coloring were so much like Jerry when he was in service that I simply imploded. I turned off the t.v. but the damage was done. Practically had to crawl up the hallway to the bed but then couldn't stay there and tried to walk the hallway. Couldn't walk either. Found myself more or less screaming in an empty house. I probably am fortunate that I live on a dead end street with old people. No one will hear me.

I can't do this. I simply can't do it. This is so horrendous and so unfair. I wish I had words to convey the impact of living a nightmare. I can't wake up! Sometimes I catch myself clenching my fist. Other times I find myself holding my breath, so much so that one day I nearly fainted before I realized it. I stopped but I started to notice that during the worst moments I can't breath. Maybe that's poetic justice.

It was not supposed to be this way. We were going to get old together. Life was going to get better now. We had hope for the new year, the first hope in so long, that things would be better this year. We were making plans. He wanted to know if he'd done the right things. I told him he had and we were going to start doing things for us.

I made him shovel the snow that morning. Even though I knew I'd never get out of that drive I had to try. And I couldn't do it. I knew I couldn't do it. I made him do it instead. He would never say no. Never say I'm sick. When he didn't finish it I fussed at him about it. He said he'd do it later but he never did. He got worse as the day wore on but the house was full and I was busy with them. I never saw it.

I should have been taking care of him. All I did was complain about everything. I never looked beyond me. I was hurting all the time and that is all I saw. I watched him die and never lifted a hand, never saw him suffering, never realized that he was dying minute by minute right in front of me. In FRONT OF ME!

It all was my fault. How do you live with that? How do you get up, walk through a day and go to sleep with that pounding you over the head, stabbing you in the chest, punching you in the stomach? You can pull the covers over your head for a while but not forever.

I don't know. I don't know. I am just tired, really, really tired. I want to break the clocks, all of them. I hate watching them move forward. I hate the alarm more than I've ever hated any single thing.

I don't know how to salvage what is left. Maybe because there is nothing left. I don't leave this room except to eat, sleep and go to work. I don't want to go anywhere. I have no contact outside except my children and people I see at work. And I don't care anymore. It just doesn't really matter that much.

Saturday will be seven months. There isn't really light at the end of the tunnel. It is just more tunnel, a grave with the ends knocked out and a road laid for gawkers.