Insanity

Hi Babe,

Recently, there are days where I feel like I’m going through the emotions of grief like it was just the first few months.  I’ve started crying in the car again, not all the time, but there are days where the reality of my life and the pain just really hits me, like a ton of bricks!!  There are days where I wonder if this is it. Is this where I will really drown and won’t be able to come up for air. I haven’t talked about PTSD in awhile, but it doesn’t mean I still don’t transport back to that day where my entire world turned upside down.  Before the PTSD was totally focused on the events leading to your death. It would play over and over in my head again. In the beginning, I kept focusing on how you fainted and had a seizure right in front of the bedroom floor. Then as I was able to get over that scene in my head, I started to focus on how you got on your knees, turned towards me, and gripped by shoulders as we stood speechless staring at each other before you got on the gurney.  How we spent our last moments staring at each other in fear and speechless. There are times, where I close my eyes and I can see your expression and those scared eyes staring at me before you got on the gurney. I can’t even imagine what you were thinking in those last few minutes before you passed. Sometimes, you don’t even know how much I obsess over this...what were your final thoughts as you were laying on that gurney going down the hill in the ambulance with a bunch of strangers trying to perform CPR before you passed.  This thought still haunts me often, and I think it will probably haunt me for the rest of my life. How scared you must have been. What were you thinking? This thought sometimes takes me to my knees whenever I think about it. I will never know what went through your mind in those last few minutes of your life, but all I know was that I was so scared, but I never once thought, “Today, I was going to be a widow.” Honestly, that never crossed my mind at all. That’s probably why when the doctors walked in and casually said, “I’m sorry but your husband died.”  I screamed, “Noooo!!” at the tops of my lungs and said, “you have the wrong person. My husband didn’t die!!” Then I turned to KT and asked, “Is this a joke?!” before I fall to the floor in tears and start kicking and screaming, like a five year old throwing a tantrum, on the floor of the “family room.” No one was able to calm me down and my sanity was nowhere to be found.

When I was finally able to stand up, I start pacing back and forth in the “family room,” pinching myself, gasping for air like I was fighting for my dear life, while ranting over and over again “This is not my life.  This is not happening to me. This is just a dream. I just need to wake up.” At some point in all this madness, I’m gasping for air to the point where I’m hyperventilating and say, “I can’t breathe. I need to get out of here.  I need some air.” So, I walk out of the “family room” and out of the hospital doors where I continue my madness and insanity in the fresh, cold and gloomy air for hours and hours on end as I pace back and forth by the side of the hospital, pinching myself, crying uncontrollably, ranting over and over “This is not my life.  This is not happening to me. This is just a dream. I just need to wake up.”

This is the image that always flashes through my mind now whenever I have a PTSD moment.  Somehow, my PTSD has changed from focusing on the events leading up to your death to my crazy lady madness and insanity.  Everytime I flash back to that day, all I can see now is how crazy and deranged I was after the doctors said, “I’m sorry but your husband died.”  It’s like I’m floating in the air, out of my body, watching this crazy and deranged lady, who looks exactly like me, pace back and forth ranting like an insanely mad woman, but she’s not anybody I’ve ever met or knew could ever exist in me.  Whenever I flash back to this moment of insanity (actually my insanity lasted longer than just a moment, probably more like days and weeks. Actually, who really knows if I’m even sane now...sometimes I wonder if I’m actually sane or just really good at “faking it until I make it!”), all I can think about is how I’m even where I am now.  How am I even functioning. How am I even coherent (because I wasn’t able to mutter anything coherent let alone say anything that wasn’t gibberish after you died)?! How do I even wake up everyday and continue living life like nothing tragic has ever happened to me?! Most of the time, I wonder where I was even able to find my sanity again because I definitely didn’t have it nor did I think I could ever find it again after you died.”  Honestly, I didn’t think I could ever get to where I am now in such a short period of time. Whenever I look back and see the stranger that looks exactly like me pacing back and forth and ranting like a crazy lady by the side of the hospital after the doctors said, “I’m sorry but your husband died”, I often wonder if the crazy lady really exist or if she was just a figment of my imagination because at what point was she able to find her sanity again (because how can anyone ever find their sanity again after going through such a painful, tragic, and traumatic experience?!)

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