Unsolicited Testimony

I shared about the summer of 2023, but not much about what came after.

Right after the last funeral, my long-term partner scheduled a trip for me to Buenos Aires. Part of it was a birthday trip, but mostly he could see I needed a break. I was in a fog the whole time.

He’s always been one of those people who pushes, and he’d push me too, for better or worse. One day, I knew he had seen something because he told me I didn’t seem okay. I hadn’t been in the garden. I didn’t want to see friends. I didn’t want to do anything but sleep. And I was sleeping a lot.

I was also having severe nightmares. Horrible ones. In one, a dog that had been dead and decomposing in a shallow grave was trying to crawl out like the undead. I don’t know why that one sticks with me, but it does. It kept me from sleeping the rest of the night. I learned later that these kinds of dreams aren’t always as meaningful as they feel in the moment.

I couldn’t think straight. I had trouble putting things together, trouble being organized, trouble concentrating. I couldn’t think past the next hour.

The final straw was an overwhelming feeling that I was next to die. I started getting my affairs in order. If it wasn’t me, it was my mom. Someone was going to die next, and it was imminent.

I went to my general practitioner. He listened. I didn’t realize I’d started crying in the appointment. I told him I was afraid I was dying. He stopped typing on the computer, came and sat down next to me, and told me I was carrying unimaginable grief, and that grief can be complicated. He held my hand and said, “You are a woman of strong moral character. We need you in the community. We need you doing what you do best, and doing it with love.”

He referred me to an intensive program for complicated grief. “I’ll put you at the front of the line,” he said.

I met with a counselor once a week. The first two weeks were an assessment, and the results surprised me. I had grief-driven PTSD at the same level as a combat veteran returning from war. I had grief-driven anxiety. I was suffering from traumatic grief. I learned a lot about brains during that time, how they work in situations like this, and how I could build my own toolbox.

I met with her every week for months. I remember the overwhelming numbness most of all. I didn’t feel anything, and I hated it. No good, no bad — just nothing. That numbness, she told me, was my nervous system recovering from shock and protecting itself.

The first fleeting moment of happiness came about six months after the last funeral. One of my dogs had been diagnosed with diabetes and hadn’t been feeling well. One day, I took him to a dog park, and he had some happy zoomies. That was the first time I felt joy. It was gone about as quickly as it came.

And here’s the thing: you still have to go about your day. You smile at people. Maybe you laugh. But that doesn’t mean you’re okay.

I remember feeling like I was in a forest, a dark, dark forest. I could see there was light outside of it, and it was beautiful. I could hear people out there calling me. But I couldn’t leave. There was an invisible barrier. They could knock, I could hear them, but I couldn’t get out.

All I wanted was for someone to sit with me in the forest. Not make me do anything. Not talk. Don’t try to rush it. Just sit with me. Be present in the silence.

My counselor was always kind. She used to nudge me toward the things I used to love, telling me the love would return. And largely, she was right. I started going to meetings again. I started listening to people. And I felt that barrier slowly expand, a little further toward the edge of the dark forest.

I’m not 100%, even years later. I find moments where I’m reminded of the dark forest. I even had to re-engage a counselor this year, because my old toolbox wasn’t working anymore.

One thing I want to say about that, because I think it gets misunderstood: sometimes you tell people you’re depressed, and the immediate reaction is to assume you want to harm yourself. They panic. That couldn’t be further from the truth for me.

When I told my new counselor I was feeling like nothing mattered, his immediate response was concern that I was going to end it all. But that’s not what I was saying. What I was trying to say was: this isn’t right. Usually, things matter to me. Usually, I’m not depressed. I’m not in danger of harming myself. I recognize these feelings when they come, and I know I need help when they do. That’s actually the healthier place to be, being self-aware enough to ask for help before things spiral, not after.

What I’ve noticed is that I’m more empathetic to people now. I’m also extremely self-aware of when I’m having emotions and how not to act on them. I guess that could be called growth.

I still struggle in the garden. I’m not sure what it is about the garden that eludes me, but I keep trying. I think I’ll never quite be the same — and that’s okay.