8mos

Today, I'm fine. Fucked up, insecure, neurotic, and emotional. Fine. And I don't want to be anything else right now. The beginning of the month just sucks. The 7th I would have been married 16 months. Today, the 9th, he's been gone 8 months. I say it all the time, but this scares the shit out of me. I keep trying to dig my heels in to the past, and its not working. Everything keeps changing, but I never wanted it to. 90% of my thoughts are based around this part of my life. I'm either thinking about grief, feeling grief, trying to contain my expression of grief, trying to figure out what has happened with my life, and wondering if I'll ever know the truth. Then, I spend time consoling myself and convincing myself that what I have now is all I'm ever gonna get. This is it. How do I go to a support group to talk about the death of my husband when I have little to nothing to share...because I DON'T KNOW. I don't have 1-5 year timeline story of illness, cancer, and hospice. Then, when I do share what I have, I'm perceived as 'closed off' or 'not ready to talk'. This is how I introduce myself:

"Hi, my name is Kerrie Habing, and my husband died on 8/9/13. We were married 8 months."
Usually followed with a collective 'awww' and the 'poor thing' facial expression.
What else do I say after that? I don't have a story that I can share. All I know is that he was there in the morning, and then he wasn't.

This is how everyone else introduces themselves:

"Hi my name is ______. My husband died _____  and fought (insert illness/disease) for __ years. Before he died, we had his funeral all planned out. He wrote his eulogy and we picked the casket and pallbearers together. My whole life was dedicated to taking care of him. Especially toward the end. I did everything for him, and it consumed my life. I was there when he took his last breath. We knew it was coming." etc.....

I'm not minimizing their feelings or suggesting that they don't have a right to grieve deeply. I'm simply saying that I don't relate. I don't have a group of people that can talk about what I've been through and understand the feelings that I have. Its so unique. I can tell people the frustration, anger, and pain of driving around the county for 6 hours trying to find him, but they don't understand it. I can tell people how I'm 24 years old, married at 22, and buried my husband at 23, but its not something that they can understand. Support, yes. Understand, no. I can explain that we never got to have kids and how painful that thought is to me, but they only see my youth and the opportunity of the future. I can't talk about hospice, cancer, heart disease, or alzheimers. I need to process the shock, helplessness, disbelief, sudden split second  that completely rerouted my entire carefully laid out plans for my future. The rest of my life was robbed from me, and I didn't do anything wrong.

"Alleluia! Holy shit! Where's the tylenol?"