Happy?

I cyberstalked someone on Facebook today.  We are not "friends," but she reveals a lot of personal information on her page, and her life fascinates me.  We are about the same age.  We are physically shaped the same.  But unlike me, she wears fun clothes, clingy clothes and flaunts her ample figure and big bosom.  She smiles broadly.  And she smiles a lot.  She loves her job, her relatively new husband, her friends, her hair, her busy and fulfilling life.  She is not particularly attractive, but her aura enchants those in her life and they see her as beautiful.  She is one of the most vivacious people I sort of know.

She is happy. Very, very happy.

And I am so jealous of her.  Because I can't imagine that I will ever be happy again.

I've been told that life is a choice and we choose whether-or-not to be happy.  I certainly don't remember choosing miserable.  I used to be a lot like her.  I used to be happy.  It's gone.  That part of my life is gone, and I don't see it coming back.

Understandably, this has been a terrible year for me as I watched my brother die.  I helped my sister with the caregiving, and I probably did a lousy job. I was squeamish with a lot of things that involved bodily fluids. I'm not very strong, so I was always afraid of hurting him. He took out a lot of anger on me, and I held it and was deeply hurt by it. So, I probably wasn't always very nice to him. We once had to go to the "principal's office" (the social worker) after a fight we had on the way to radiation that carried on into the facility. I think that was the day I just stopped smiling. Real smiling, I mean.  I can paste one on my face, but I can't feel it.

For months, I didn't do anything Facebook worthy.  My sister and the girls traveled to China.  I stayed with Glenn. I do not regret it; I'm glad I could do it for my family.  But my sense of adventure is gone now.  If you offered me that trip today, I'd say no.   My outings were short because I didn't want to leave him alone; so instead of a beach trip, I didn't plan anything more than a trip to the grocery store or an outing to the Superstore for something he needed. Somehow, those months have scarred me because I can't get back into the groove of going out and doing things. I no longer have that desire for adventure, or the energy to have "fun."  I feel serious anxiety about going anywhere. I want to stay in my house and play games on the computer or watch endless reruns of Grey's Anatomy. Are there degrees of agoraphobia? Am I on the agoraphobic spectrum?

This person I cyberstalked has a lot of friends, different kinds of friends.  She's always doing things and going places with groups of friends.  Or with other couples, because people who are married do "couple" things and they like even numbers when they do them.  People ask her to join them, they want to do things with her. They want to take pictures with her. I'm so jealous of the fun she has, of the joy she feels every day upon waking up.

I learned that caregiving can be a very lonely thing.  The whole time I was in Pennsylvania, I did not see one person that wasn't medically related or a personal friend of my brother's. I have to say, I miss his friends. They visited faithfully and brought joy and hope to the long days.  I completely fell off the social register. I rarely saw anyone from my old life.  Months and months of that can do a number on a person.  I am now used to the solitude. It's my new norm.  I may hate it, but I have no energy to change it.

I envy Facebook Woman her happiness.  I don't believe I will ever be truly happy again.  I am so full of grief and anger that I don't believe I have enough years left in my life to work it out and get past it. I'm angry at the people who let me down.  I am angry that I lost a dear friend to cancer a few weeks before I lost my brother. I am angry that I was so helpless to do any real good when my brother suffered. I am angry that I can't sleep because I am haunted by the last week of his life playing over and over again in my head. I am angry because I feel so alone all the time.  I feel sad that my prayers seem to be falling on deaf ears.

Is that all there is?  That Peggy Lee song used to haunt me. I reread the lyrics recently, and even Peggy brings out the booze and goes dancing with her friends. That's the most depressing song I know, and even that song is happier than I feel anymore.

Is this just a stage of grief, or is this the rest of my life?  Will I ever be happy again? Will I ever again go to bed grateful for what I have and wake up thankful for what's to be?

I recently read an article by Elizabeth Kupferman that touched me deeply because she understood exactly how I was feeling.  I got the feeling that what I'm experiencing is more normal than abnormal.  Part of her advice was to share these feelings.  So, I wrote my blog.  And now you know. Here's a link to her amazing article.

http://www.expressivecounseling.com/grief-loneliness-friends/ 

  (You'll need to copy/paste this address, I can't get the link to work.)