The Days Keep Dragging

Another calendar month has come and gone. People keep remarking how fast the summer is flying by. For me it’s dragging. Every day is a lifetime filled with nonstop thoughts of Ariella. The thoughts change but are always about Ariella. About what we are missing. About how much I miss her. About how much I want to hear her voice and tell her about my day. About her days in the hospital. About what we could have done differently. She is all around me. Everything is a reminder. And I mean everything. Nothing is safe. She is a constant in my life no matter what I am doing or where I go. Some thoughts are happy memories though they make me sad, and some are tragic. Doesn’t matter. I can’t escape them. 24/7 I am missing my daughter. I count down the minutes until I can go to sleep once again. I survived another day. But then I wake up. Another day to get through. I force myself out of bed. I run or go to the gym, the only thing that remotely helps me right now. And I try to fill the rest of my day until I can sleep again. The summer can’t end soon enough. I’m anxious about going back to work but at least my days will be filled. I’ll have a routine. I’ll have no choice but to get out of bed. I’ll have no choice but to keep myself busy at my job.

Work though is going to bring its own set of worries. I work with children. Everyday I’ll interact with children near Ariella’s age. I will watch them learn and progress and grow. Some of my students I’ve known for several years. They know I have a daughter. They ask about her. They didn’t know she was sick. How do I respond when they ask about her now? Some of them are the same age, in the same grade Ariella would be. How? How am I going to watch these kids learn and experience all the things Ariella will never get to experience? I love my job and I love my students but this is going to be a real test. And not just the interaction with the kids, but interaction with the staff as well. I work in multiple schools so I don’t get to know staff at any individual school very well. But they are aware of the situation. I am mostly in the same schools as last year so I am dreading the first week or so back, having those conversations with people I don’t know all that well. I just hope that it’s far enough out that when they see me it’s not immediately on their minds. I am relieved to be in the same schools because the thought of adjusting to new schools on top of everything else was increasing my anxiety about going back. At least I’ll be dealing with the familiar (other than one new school).

I’ve got a little over three weeks left to fill before I go back to work. I’ve had so many offers for lunch, dinner, etc. and I appreciate them, I really do. I can’t accept them all. While doing nothing isn’t good, doing too much isn’t good either. I pay for it later. Interacting with others is exhausting. Making small talk is exhausting. No matter who I’m with it always hits me what I’m missing, what our lives are missing and as soon as I leave, the world comes crashing down yet again. I’ve always been introverted and even more so now I prefer to be alone most of the time. It’s actually quite the conundrum. I want to be alone but I need to fill my days. I don’t want to just mindlessly stare at the TV all day but I don’t want to go out and do much of anything. Nothing is the right thing so I am trying to find that right balance of not shutting myself completely off but also not exerting myself too much.

I never understood depression before. Anxiety and I had/have a very close relationship, I know anxiety quite well, but was not so familiar with depression. I just didn’t understand how life could feel so bad that one would have no motivation to do anything or be able to take pleasure in various experiences and activities. It made no sense to me. No matter how bad things seemed there was always pleasure and happiness to be had along with the bad times. I get it now. The root of the depression may be different, mine being situational, but I fully understand lack of motivation and being unable to experience joy. It is a dreadful way to live, feeling like there is no reason to keep on going. What is the point of living without happiness, meaning, or purpose? Why suffer through that? If anyone has the answer to that I’d love to hear it.