Sisyphus (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Despite the bawdiness and the bravado, I am, today, wondering how I’m going to get through this.
Like Sisyphus, I’m pushing my boulder of grief up the mountainside only for it to come crashing down once it nears the top.
Insomnia has set in again, not through lack of alcohol, but because of the heat. It has reached the woozy heights of 19 degrees in the village, and both my daughter and I are still rolling about the bed at midnight trying to find the cool patch. Insomnia allows Bad Thoughts to roam free, and also draws attention to the wardrobe, at the bottom of which is the casket containing…well, Him.
Sunny days are, in themselves, catalysts for sadness – they make everywhere look full of hope, even grey-rendered, pebble-dashed Northern villages such as this one. But part of me doesn’t want hope to blossom (the stubborn, self-pitying, foot-stamping toddler part), because M has been denied it.
My counsellor is starting a round of Exposure Therapy next week. This does not involve us flashing our bits at each other across a crowded room; rather, we will be breaking down the traumatic event (Husband, intercourse, “socks!”, pillow, dead), recording it like chapters in a book, then ‘exposing’ ourselves to it and the onslaught of emotions it elicits. By deconstructing the trauma, its power to destabilise is weakened, therefore I can allow myself to think about it occasionally without hyperventilating.
It sounds like psycho-babble, but I’m trying to be hopeful.
Wife After Death 
Insomnia is something which has been a rotten part of my own existence for so many years I cannot count. For those of us grappling with various personal demons, it is a wonder we ever manage to fall asleep at all. I wish I could find something helpful to give in the way of advice when it comes to conquering the insomnia. I would surely pass it on if only I knew.
It is something I never suffered from before, which makes it all the more bloody frustrating. I just can’t seem to get to sleep, no matter how tired I am. I don’t want to start popping more pills, and normally the alcohol helps, but this weather (OK, it’s not hot for you maybe, for here it’s positively tropical!) is making it worse. Gah! X
I sometimes think it would be lovely if there was a little switch we could flick that would bring sleep or maybe a tap on the forehead (once for an hour, twice for two, and so on) and off you go to la-la land. That being said if one was to accidentally tap that spot at an inappropriate time it could be horrendous and of course there would be tremendous financial losses in the sleep aide industry. Still that could be made up by all the new jobs in the prevention of head-butts department. Break a leg with your therapy (no head-butts allowed).