I lost my shit on a customer service rep today.  Lost.My.Shit. Demanded, in a voice that scared the dog, that she needed to put her supervisor on the phone.  Repeatedly.  Sternly.  When she said she understood my frustration I told her she couldn’t begin to understand my frustration. I was loud, I was adamant, I was pissed.  

I was very terse with the vet later this afternoon as well.  I spoke my mind mostly calmly but quite seriously about being kept waiting for over forty minutes for my appointment and eventually broke down in tears from her patronizing tone suggesting that I was doing a good job caring for a pet that must be very important to be, “given my recent loss.” 

My therapist should have been forewarned, I suppose, since my appointment with her came on the heels of my first couple of days back at school and then a day like this.  I completely lost it on her couch and only somewhat joked that she should bill my insurance double for this session. 

I don’t have it together.  I’m not even close.  I am angry every single day and my grief is tangible and agonizing.  I scream in the car, I cry at the grocery store, I fight the urge to throw things daily and I beg and beg and beg for his return.  

My whole life I have wanted one singular thing: to connect deeply with one other human being.  To know and be known.  I’ve never been one to have a large circle of friends or even to have a girlfriend or two with whom I share all my secrets. I’ve had my heart broken when I wrongly thought I had found the one to share such a connection with, and I struggled mightily during the years I was single, trying to make meaning of my life without someone that wanted a similar connection with me. 

And then came James.  I will never claim our marriage was perfect, but the connection between us was.  He was my truest and deepest friend.  And I am completely lost without him.  I look around me and see a life that I enjoyed because it was shared with him.  The tasks and hobbies around the farm we enjoyed doing because we did them together.  When I look ahead, I see no path, no direction, no way forward to joy, because he isn’t there.  I’ve lost my purpose.  I’ve lost the very thing that gave my life meaning and joy.  And there is no way to get that back. 

I was reassured by my aforementioned underpaid therapist today that it is not uncommon to have such an existential crisis in the midst of grief, but she also quickly acknowledged that simply knowing that doesn’t make it any less burdensome.  I told her I don’t even feel like myself.  I’m not at all the sort to speak to a customer service rep like I did today.  I’m definitely not one to visibly lose my temper after being kept waiting.  And I don’t generally cry in front of people but Lord knows that went by the wayside about a year ago. 

The little things that previously brought me enormous joy can never begin to fill the void of his loss.  The crocuses are blooming, the daylilies are sprouting, the chickens are all finally laying eggs again, but none of these blessed little things that we used to delight in do anything for me now.  She reminds me, this patient therapist of mine, that I am healing, and healing takes time.  I tell her how I feel self-absorbed, I feel irrational, I feel selfish and childish and weak.  She says I have to cut myself some slack, give myself grace and recognize that I am doing the very best I can.  But I don’t like this person that I am.  I don’t like feeling this lost, this hopeless, this angry, this lonely, this sad.  I just can’t seem to find a way back to the joy, I can’t find a way back to me.  Not yet, she reminds me.  Not yet.  Right now, she reminds me, I am drowning in grief.  Right now, I have to weather this storm.  

She definitely doesn’t get paid enough.