When one is faced with living with the mind numbing horrific trauma that I have seen, one learns to distract themselves.

At first, when everything is fresh, you walk around like a zombie (which after seeing dead bodies, you really don’t ever want to see a picture of a zombie or have to explain to someone why you cannot watch The Walking Dead). You do random things, like clean the kitchen, organize a box, pay bills.  This is like the next day. Because you cannot sit still.  Your brain is trying to wrap itself around what happened and it can’t, because it is so fucking unbelievable.  A quote that I heard after was “you cannot make sense out of something that never will make sense” plays around, because we are mostly rational in our day to day.  We want to understand, make sense of things. And this, this thing, you cannot.

There are many things that need to happen after a death.  And double that when there is two. The first thing that happens is shock, shock, and more shock. I remember sitting in my living room, talking with the police, answering question after question, looking around, asking if I could turn off the AC (Jesse had turned it on for some reason), I was so so cold. I asked if I could go upstairs (?!). I think at some point while on the couch I asked if she was dead (I thought it was poison at that point, I did not see the gun). They finally led me out to sit in one of the police cars and took my phone.  I kept saying, wait, I need to call Raffi’s dad, he need to pick her up, I need to call my mother in law, I need her, I need to call my sister, etc. I need to do. In retrospect, I remember a lot, then there are blocks that I don’t. My mind was already trying to survive.

What does the mind do to survive you may ask?  It is a good question. Many things. We have this inherent want and need to survive. The more I study suicide, the more I believe that. Which you may think is weird, but it is not. If you ask anyone who has survived jumping off the Golden Gate bridge, they all regretted their decision once they jumped.  We want to live, but sometimes the pain is so bad, we will do anything to stop it. But again, the inherent want is there. So, back to what the mind will do. It will do. It will do anything to not think of that elephant in the room. Don’t get me wrong, you will. You will go down some rabbit holes of thinking that you will do anything to get out of. If you found your loved ones, you will replay that scene in your mind everyday until you die. You will think of the last moment you were with them alive. You will replay many things in your mind. Yet, remember, you want to survive, so you learn the art of distraction.

After, it’s “almost” easy. You don’t have that perspective until much later. When you are in the thick of it, you are in hell and think you will never emerge from its fiery depths. You are sucked down time and time again. But, in the beginning, there are a  gazillion things that need to be done that fill your time.  I recommend you ask for help in making these decisions. The things that you normally should take time to think about, and definitely not do when in a crisis, you have to. Stay in your house, sell it, buy a new one, go through your life and get rid of stuff, what do you keep, what do you get rid of, etc.  It almost is like this horror film that is playing in your subconscious, has a Disney movie playing over it, your mind flitting back and forth.  At some point, this immediate to do list settles down.  There are new to do lists that you never had to deal with (when in a partnership, those are often balanced, and when you find yourself alone, it’s all on you). But even so, after awhile, there is a relative rhythm. It is within that rhythm, that dance of doing, there will come a time when there is emptiness. This is where it can be messy.  Very messy.  It is necessary and so important to process, get help and support with therapy to work through the avalanche of feeling that you will deal with on a day to day basis. But those times of emptiness will start to spread. What then.

Wait, my phone just vibrated, I will be right back. Wait, I need to check facebook. Hold on, I need to clean my toilets. Isn’t my car low on gas? I need to mow the lawn.  I have to…

I have to distract. Every time I am at my therapists office, I fill him in on all of my adventures. I am constantly doing stuff, I never just sit, that leads to thinking.  So I do. I think at this point he just expects it, and even breaks out with a laugh occasionally and shakes his head. I cannot make up the shit that happens to me. I could make a stand up routine on it. But in all seriousness, I look at him, wringing my fingers the whole time and say “it is not lost on me at all that everything I am telling you is insignificant and completely avoiding the elephant in the room that I am not dealing with” (more Bella’s death than Jesse’s at this point). Hers is the grief that will undo me, I have said that time and time again. Last week, it was there, knocking on the door, and god help me I ramped up that list again.

You have to be careful. Distractions can get you in trouble. You have the potential to make really, and I mean really stupid choices you may never have in the past (see the website name – life’s new normal). I have done some shit in the last two and a half years that my former self would say, damn girl, what the fuck?!  I joke with the said therapist and say “well, it is a good week, I have not tried heroin yet.”  This is no joke. People who are dealing with grief, especially the level that I am, will do ANYTHING to make the pain stop. I have thought about it, I mean you see the movies, you see the people shoot up and melt and not care about anything. I will never do it.  Seriously.  But you think about it, you think about a whole list of things to stop the pain.  You have to watch out for a whole list of things like drugs, alcohol, even prescribed stuff. You have to ask if what you are about to do is stupid or not.  When that pain hits, you will do anything to make it stop. It is important to have healthy habits set up and in place. If you don’t, now is the best time to start. My default is luckily this. So even if I have a week where I drink “too much” (and keep in mind my mother died of this, so my too much is never too much, but if I am having a beer or two every night for a week, it’s too much), I check in and say it is time to get healthy again.  Repeat with other things that I may do. I have a few people who I tell everything to, it helps me to keep myself in check and sometimes avoid those stupid decisions that I may regret later. I may still make the choice. Because sometimes the pain is such that I am in a I don’t give a fuck for the consequences place. No, I am not proud of that statement, but it is the truth.

The truth. The truth is that grief of this magnitude sucks. The truth is that it is part of you for the rest of your life. The truth is that you will at times do things you may have never done before to stop that pain. The truth is that your life at times will become a series of distractions that lead you away from the elephant in the room that is your grief. It is okay to do this, but it is also important to talk with someone about it, to work through it, it is not going to go away just by distracting and ignoring it.  The distractions are a way for your brain to survive.  A way to take a break from the intensity of the memories, the grief, the flashbacks.  Make a list of things that are healthy to do to distract.  Exercise, read, watch a show, look on facebook, call a friend, make a cup of tea, you get the picture. Know that you will at times do anything to stop that pain when it hits hard.  Having these set up as your “norm” and day to day can help immensely.  Most of all, be kind to yourself.

One of my many distractions…