Burn Out

Also, tact and tempers are fraying in several places on the forum. I've been trying all day to think of new and unrelated threads: we should have a reserve of unasked questions for times of emergency, perhaps.

I'm still going to talk about the news, because I'd imagine most of my thoughts will still be taken up by the news, though. But here's an idea - a personal punditry chatter charity box. Every time you feel the need to make a post about the situation, put 10p into a jar or something, so your shooting your mouth off does some actual good too.

I am so in favour of keeping my thoughts to myself right now. I sent one post today advocating *tolerance* and *respect* for each other on this day of international mourning, and the flurry of posts from those who wished to twist my words and create conflict was credibility defying. I want no part in it whatsoever. Right now I can see no hope for the human race. In future I'll focus on saving myself.

I am feeling media burn out. I've just decided to stop watching the news reports about it and just read a select few things in the papers.

I don't want to sound horrible and/or egotistical, but right now I'm finding it difficult enough to cope with one death three weeks ago without having to take another 20,000 into account.

Does this make me a lesser human being or just a more honest one?

I can emphasise, of course I can. Of course I rang/e-mailed everyone I could think of over there who could have been affected/involved on Tuesday/Wednesday. The woman quoted in the Guardian yesterday about the guy to whom she'd just got engaged: "I spent my whole life trying to find him . . . now he's gone, how am I supposed to carry on?"

Families destroyed. Loves destroyed. With some foreknowledge (however brief).

But my heart cannot find space for these poor people. I know full well that there is nothing I could say which would make any difference to them or would create a bridge across which we could identify.

This is because I cannot communicate. Not properly. It's really kicking in now - three weeks after the event. The first week I was on autopilot. The second week I could see a little bit of a way forward, starting to feel optimistic. But now - delayed reaction, the full horror of the fact that my other half isn't here anymore, and the fact that I really don't know how I can carry on. I can't see beyond the next five minutes.

I went to see "Moulin Rouge" last week to cheer myself up and maybe work up a thread for here. But, as anyone who's seen the film and knows how it ends - well, not exactly what I needed, was it?

Read the Billy MacKenzie biog this week as well - he really did feel so guilty about not having grieved properly for his mother, about having to keep up bloody appearances.

I know there are a few people on these boards who have been bereaved - I wonder, how have you coped? Did you get the same initial "oh-I'll- carry-on" feeling, and then weeks later "oh-shit-it's-not-a-dream- fucking-hell"? Is this delayed reaction normal?

Please just tell me that I'm not going mad - because I think I'm losing the plot.

Anything I say is going to sound stupid, but, Marcello, you're not going mad. There is no right way or wrong way to grieve. Personal loss and national tragedy don't cancel each other out. I feel terrible because I did not say anything by way of condolences to you 3 weeks ago, because I was locked in my own pitiful drama. I didn't have the words then, I still don't have the words now, but I just wanted to say something along the lines of I'm really sorry for your loss.

I have little experience, but I do know that these things don't follow rules. The closest I can share is, when my grandfather died a few years ago, I just felt numb for a long time, like it just wasn't real. It wasn't until nearly a *month* later, and I can't remember what reminded me of him, and it hit me that it was true, he was gone, but I just dissolved in tears and was inconsolable.

That's nothing compared to what a scale of what you're probably going through, but... what I did to get through it was to remind myself of the things that he had loved, and to celebrate the things that he loved, and though it sounds pompous and silly, I kept my memory of him alive by remembering what he loved.

I really hope I haven't made things worse by spouting stupid crap when you're hurting. I just don't want you to feel like you're crazy cause you're not grieving to someone else's expectations, or feel that you're alone. OK?

Yeah, what Kate said basically.

Don't begin to beat yourself up over not proportioning grief to tragedies that may be abstract to your own, immediate life. Bereavement can be all consuming in the weeks and months following a loss, I know it all to well. It's discombobulating, it's bewidering, it's painfull.
Ah, the pain. It would be quicker to list the few remaining family members I have left then those that I have lost. When my father died I felt nothing, or rather I chose, unconciously, to block out the grief. It must have been months before it hit, and boy oh girl did it hit.
But anyway, immediately after his death I wandered around as if I was looking for him, as if I just couldn't find him. I passed his empty chair, where is he? How can he not be here? It doesn't make SENSE that he isn't here. Strange and... annoying, I actually got annoyed and frustrated about the fact he wasn't around anymore. It wasn't fair.
That was when I was 14 and turbulant times lay ahead. But life drags you along in it's wake and I'm still here. I just wish I had embraced my grief at the time. Cried, sobbed, wailed, screamed, hit the walls, broke things... ANYTHING other than the contained, internalised, dazed nothingness which exploded much later on.
Not that I don't still feel the pain, it's still there but I'm used to it now, I've made peace with it, it's part of who I am and it's okay. Cos I still think of him, still miss him, all the time. Every week. It makes me sad that he's not here to just share experiences and things with me, but it hasn't stopped me from being happy.
And my memories of him are happy ones, and they'll always be with me. And I'm glad.

the love of my life died last dec. killed, head on, in a car wreck, just outside london, oddly enough. i had spent 9 years of my life, on and off, to varying degrees of intensity and intimacy, with this person. we had drifted apart, in the previous year, estranged from a "break up" (although that hardly seems adequate enough a word.) the news of her death didn't even reach me until two weeks later, when her aunt, going through her belongings after they had been shipped back to the states, found my number in her address book. i didn't even get to attend the funeral. i've never been "closer" to another human, that innate, unspoken understanding, than her. and she was gone, swoosh, just like that. i wept, of course, openly, and for several days. it led - however tangentially or not - to the dissolution of my then current relationship. but, a few weeks later, i thought i was ready to move on. i had moved back to my hometown, ready to "start over." things could only get better, looking up on up. then, a week later, a fragment of melody, a scent, a pattern of light on a wall, sent me into paroxysms of depression and inconsolable tears. i'm still in the throes of it marcello, i still break down quite frequently, unable to wrap my head around the absence in the space she once occupied. so unfortunately i can't honestly tell you if there's "another side" to it all. (i have to - desperately - imagine there is. otherwise, what's the point??) but, i can tell you that you're not alone and there's an ear (eye?) here, if you need it.