Setting limits

I'm sleeping better, my hematocrit is back up to a healthy number, I've gained my weight back, and I'm eating well. Still, I'm exhausted. The external, physical reasons have all been addressed, but my fatigue is core, apparently unshakeable, at least for now.

Twenty-four hours a day, no matter what I'm doing, my subconscious is attempting to deal with Sandy's absence. My psyche is working to process a huge amount of unthinkable data: all the ways in which Sandy's death affects my life. Sometimes I surrender all my bandwidth to that effort, allowing myself to shriek and moan with grief. Other times I relegate the process to the deep background as I focus on work or volunteer tasks or meet challenges that require physical fortitude. But if I leave it in the background for too long, I suffer. Bereavement demands tremendous resources, and it claims them from any available neuron.

I asked what picture she wanted me to use for
this post, and this is one that came up. I think of
it as her "Brie, take care of yourself" look, and
on some occasions, it also served to say "now
you're just being stupid."

No matter how many times Sandy and I talked about death - recently or over the 15 years we were together, I wasn't prepared for the always-on nature of grief. The integration process is a beast that must be fed, and if I skimp on food, sleep, exercise, or time alone, it gnaws on bone, muscle, or anything else it finds in reserve. Its drain on my resources magnifies every other form of stress, leaving me irritable and overwhelmed when even the smallest things go wrong.

I'm learning to leave gaps of unscheduled time in my days, budget extra time for changing projects and priorities, and balance the need to be social with the need to be alone. Most days, I still overschedule myself, and I typically end the day with more items on my to-do list than I started with. That has to change.

I've just said no to a work project. I was tempted by the extra cash, at first. However, the more I thought about the additional stress it would bring to my life in the next few weeks, when I'm already behind on so many projects, the more I realized no amount of money is worth it for me right now. It's not cashflow, but timeflow, that concerns me these days.

I wonder sometimes if I should have taken an entire year off work after Sandy died. We'd always said we needed to have enough money saved that the survivor could take a year off to mourn. But when clients started calling about recurring projects, I thought I was up to it. And, as a freelancer, I didn't want to lose any of my steady gigs. I thought I'd scheduled everything reasonably, leaving myself plenty of time to grieve. But that hasn't proven to be the case, and not entirely due to my negligence. So I'm just going to keep saying no for a little while until I find it easier to breathe.