Monthly Archives: February 2015

Will power – so unpredictable and finite

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“Will” – noun

  • the faculty by which a person decides on and initiates action.
  • control deliberately exerted to do something or to restrain one’s own impulses.

Will power, this is something very different to desire, or wanting something. There is a difference between giving up and knowing when you have had enough. I don’t feel any further along this journey other than the fact that the passage of time is something completely out of my control so therefore I continue to exist through the fog. I have no desire nor do I want to live the life I have been left. I haven’t written a blog for a while, I haven’t had the strength or energy but also this is similar to a diary or journal of my inner most thoughts, and they’re so negative. I cannot help the way I feel or what I think, it is what it is.

I feel totally trapped, like William is in heaven in the sky, what I have left of life is down here on Earth, but I am somewhere in between, floating in limbo. All I want is to be with William. Not wanting to be here to exist through what life is only leads to the fact that I’ve had enough; and the cold harsh reality of that is taking my own life. There is such stigma around suicide, that it is a cold, blunt act, with such finality. This is not what I want, I don’t want to ‘die’ I just want to be with William, but he is never going to be here again, he is gone. For me the acceptance of this fact only means one thing, that if I want to be with William I would have to make the ultimate choice of life, to take my own. It is very hard for me to write this, I know so many people who read this will not like to hear it, mostly because it is a subject that is not often talked about, but that is the truth, my thoughts and feelings haven’t changed; I have felt this way for a long time. I don’t feel ashamed of the way I feel, and I don’t want to hide behind the stock answers to ‘how are you?’ “well, you know up and down”. I can’t hide it. I’m terrified, terrified of being here, I fear tomorrow, knowing that tomorrow will not feel any better than today but worse, the pain intensifying alongside the bond between William and I strengthening. If it wasn’t for suicide, I would have killed myself by now. This may be a hard concept for you to understand but because I know I have that choice tomorrow, it is my safety net today.

Taking your own life, whether it is a choice or an impulsive action is not cowardly but takes sheer will power and guts. It is not a nice place to be, a place that is so dark, so isolating. I am scared, scared because I no longer feel like myself, will power is so unpredictable and absolutely finite when it takes hold. The thoughts and feelings are involuntary, overwhelming and all consuming.

This is where will power comes into play. I can never say that I ‘want’ the life I have been left after losing William or have any desire for it, but you must have will power to allow the passage of time to make living with it a little easier.  How can this happen knowing that life will never be better. It can only ever be different. From the day that I found out I was pregnant everyday surpassed my expectations, I never knew that a love so intense existed. And with every day that passed I fell more and more in love. Losing William so suddenly and unexpectedly completely cut off my lifeline, my outlet for that physical love gone, when William died, so did I. My heart and soul went with William that day, I feel like an empty shell with a tortured soul. Everyday is total torment. I wish I could sit here and type that I ‘hope’ it will get easier, but I almost don’t want it to. I don’t want to live without William. I’m just going through the motions.

I just want my baby.

Living with anxiety

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“Nobody else will ever know the
strength of my love for you.
After all, you’re the only one
who knows what my heart
sounds like from the inside.

Acceptance of where I am on this insufferable journey has somewhat given me some breathing space to not expect any more from myself than where I am and what I’m thinking. It is normal to think and feel the way I do. The thoughts about not wanting to die but equally not wanting to go on without William to co-exist is a hard concept for anyone looking from the outside in to understand, but for me it is a personal battle that I enter into every morning that I wake up, again to the realisation that William is gone.

The only change since my last post is the noticeable difference of the symptomatic side effects of anxiety. I still sit here with heightened anxiety but the medication has lifted the lid on the intensity. Sometimes it’s not enough, I become more and more agitated and what ability I did have to string my thoughts together completely diminishes. This feeling is unsettling and leaves me in limbo. Whenever I come up against something difficult I’ve always taken a very logistical and pragmatic view on how to break it down and deal with it. However, I can’t make sense of this, how can you? How can you break something down and manage it when the foundations of your life have been destroyed.

All I am doing each day is tolerating life, tolerating each day. Not wanting to or having the desire to move forward without William. I kind of feel like moving forward with life or even each day is somehow leaving William behind, leaving behind what has happened. I can hear you all saying to me ‘but you carry him with you’, ‘he’s in your heart and in your mind’, ‘you’ll never leave William behind, he’ll be with you always’, and you are right but it’s not the same as William being here, to me it feels like a betrayal to move forwards, to get to the end of each day. I now know I am not going to be moving forward knowingly, not by choice but if I do it’ll be naturally without me knowing. It doesn’t help when people point out subtle changes in my mood or something that I might do, all this does is exaggerate that it’s a ‘marker’, a ‘sign’, but it creates more of an issue for me, pointing out that I have managed to cope better with something doesn’t allow me to move forward naturally without me knowing or noticing, but just highlights that it’s happening, and that is what I want to avoid completely. I don’t want to move forward.

To even begin to entertain the idea that there is a life without William, there is another element that my mind is fighting against. That is needing William’s permission, William’s permission that it is ‘ok’, ‘ok’ to function and exist without him here. This is something that William cannot possibly tell me himself but something that I need to ‘feel’ him say or ‘sense’ him telling me. At the moment I am not ready or willing to allow this to happen. So for now I will carry on tolerating life, tolerating each day.

One thing I am certain of now is that if I carry on with this life, the life I have been left without William, I will only ever manage to live with what has happened. I will not leave it behind me or move forward but learn how carry it with me through life. Like I carried William for 9 months, like I carried him in my arms for 382 days, and now like I am left to carry him, only in my heart.

Struggling to cope

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It’s been over a week now since I wrote my last post. That week feels like a lifetime. Everyday feels like a lifetime. Every hour and every minute. As we slowly creep into February I have no concept of the day of the week, apart from Sundays, every Sunday I relive the day that shattered our lives. I didn’t realise that I could feel any worse than I did that day. But Sunday 25th easily took that crown. After being discharged from hospital on the 26th I was home. Thinking well I’ve been to rock bottom, but this last week showed me that there is no bouncing back from rock bottom, you just sit there.

As the week wore on I very quickly found out that I wasn’t able to manage. Struggling even to string my own thoughts together. Thursday my anxiety was virtually out of control. The constant tremors absolutely exhausting. The adrenalin surging through my whole body, it is so hard to explain but the only thing I can relate it to is when you have a near miss car crash and you get those intense butterflies in your stomach and it comes up your chest and into your throat, your heart pounds in your chest, your hands are clammy, a constant headache. Well, that’s where I’m at, all the time. Visibly noticeable to those around me, lifting a drink I could barely hold the glass without it shaking everywhere, gripping a pen virtually impossible. Not able to concentrate, not taking in what people were saying to me. I just had to go to bed. Hoping for some relief. As I lay there and close my eyes, I couldn’t even rest, my eyes shaking with the tremors. How does that work? Why does it happen? I have never in my life felt like this or experienced anything like it.

To say I slept that night would be a lie, laying there with every thought going through my head, What if I’d gone in to him earlier? What if I’d not listened to the doctors and taken him to hospital? Was he in pain? Running through every detail of finding him on the Sunday morning was only torturing myself but I had no control over what I was thinking. As I look at everyone around me I feel like I should be further ahead on this journey, like I should somehow be living with it better. But the fact of the matter is I’m not, I’m nowhere near, not even close, this last week has actually been the worst I have felt since losing William. I didn’t think I could ever feel as bad than the days immediately following the 14th of December but I was wrong. I no longer have that immediate shock, the complete numbness, when you still don’t think it’s real.

This last week has passed in a fog. Some days I haven’t even had the strength to get out of bed, the need to be with William has completely consumed me. William will never be coming back, so where does that leave me? Stuck here, in a life that I don’t want, a life that doesn’t include William. I have never in my life before felt so much despair, there are no words to describe or explain to you what this feeling is like. Can you imagine a time in your life or when something has happened where going to sleep and not waking up, that not living anymore, that taking your own life is the better option rather than going through another minute of this pain. This is where I’ve been.

Until you have been there (and I hope you never are) it’s very difficult to understand. Those that are around me don’t know how to help me, no-one can, no-one can fix this, no-one can bring William back. I’m having daily visits with the mental health team and psychiatrists, numerous visits to the doctors, therapy, and when necessary going to hospital. Not to mention the plethora of tablets I’m taking just to function. But this is my own battle, it has to be one that I want to win, and therein lies my problem. I know that at the end of the road there is a life for me, not a better one, not one I had planned, but a life. However, at the moment I am sat on the path next to the road in a bubble, not wanting that life, because I know that life is without William.

But for now I accept where I am. Accept that I am no further down the road than this. Accept that all these feelings and thoughts I am experiencing are normal, but I will not accept what has happened, that is something I will never do.

This is what it feels like to go to hell, but I’m not back yet.