Fatigue

Getting out of bed is getting harder and harder for me.  I've never in my life been this tired for this long.

Yes, pregnancy is tiring.  Almost any mother will tell you this- sometimes over and over again.  But my fatigue is something different.  I am dealing with the fatigue of pregnancy plus  the fatigue of grief.  And the fatigue of extreme grief is like nothing else- not just a physical lethargy, but a mental, spiritual, and emotional exhaustion that doesn't go away.

I was tired going in.  Two weeks before Ryan died, I had been asked to work out of Trenton, NJ for a few days a week, which, in rush hour traffic, is about an hour and a half away from my house.  The weekend before I started doing this trek, I found out that I was pregnant.  The combination of the first trimester of pregnancy and three hours in the car each day was incredibly tiring.  Plus, of course, I had cut coffee out of my morning routine.  Then, two days before Ryan died, his family and I threw him a graduation party, which I worked all weekend on.  By February 18th, my birthday and the day before Ryan died in the early morning hours, I was wiped out.  That night, we watched the season finale of Downton Abbey together, and I fell asleep on the couch.  Then I ate my birthday cupcake and Ryan and I went to bed- I'm sure I dozed off within a few minutes.

But that tiredness I felt before that night was nothing compared to what I would experience over the next few months, and what I am still experiencing now.  For the first few nights after Ryan's death, I didn't sleep well at all.  I couldn't bring myself to sleep in a bed, so I spent about a week sleeping on my parents' couch.  It wasn't comfortable, but my sleep was worse off because of the dreams I was having and the anxiety I was experiencing.  I could hear my Dad snoring down the hall, and it would wake me up in a cold sweat, because of how similar it sounded to the noises Ryan made while in seizure.  Every time I closed my eyes I would see flashes of things that had happened that night, like the way Ryan's face looked at different times.  It was terrible.  Between the lack of sleep and the fact that I couldn't eat well, I was making myself more and more physically tired.

The emotional and mental exhaustion increased more gradually over time.  Getting through things like telling all of Ryan's friends what had happened, planning a funeral, going through the funeral and accepting condolences from an endless line of people, meeting with an estate lawyer...it was all very tiring.  Once I was through all of that and life started to calm back down, the reality started to set in that Ryan wasn't coming back.  I had gone through all of this, and now that it was over, the truth was that it wasn't really over.  It never will be.

Every morning I wake up, I wake up without Ryan next to me, and have to remember everything all over again.  It's not the same as before- it's not the first thing I think about anymore because I don't really forget about it overnight anymore.  But, I do spend the entire morning thinking about things- different things, but always Ryan things.  By the time I'm out of the shower, I'm already emotionally worn out.  As my pregnancy has progressed and I've started carrying more and more weight, I also find that I'm physically exhausted by the time I'm dressed too.  That's all before I go to work.  It gets worse over time, because I feel like the longer I'm without him, the more real it gets, and realizing the reality of it is part of what's tiring.  The more I know that Ryan's not coming back, and that part of my life is over, the sadder I am.  Knowing that I will never see my soul mate again in this life drains my spirit.  I feel like I could get so much strength and energy back if he could just put his arms around me and hold me for a while.  Then, knowing that he of course can't do that drains me even more.

People don't get it.  I know that I can't expect them to, but I do expect them to try to understand that they can't understand.  While I was in my second trimester, I had a coworker ask me how I was feeling.  When I answered that I was tired, she was confused as to why I hadn't gotten a burst of energy in my second trimester like most pregnant women do.  I explained that I am always tired, that I had been since my husband died.  I could tell that she still didn't get it, and I wasn't sure what to do then.  I'm too tired to try to pretend that I'm not tired.

For a while I thought it would get better once the baby is born.  I won't be pregnant anymore, so even though the fatigue of grief will still be here, the physical pains of pregnancy won't be.  Then one day I realized that I'll be trading the physical strain of pregnancy for the exhaustion that comes with being the mother of a newborn- midnight feedings and the like.  At least right now I'm sleeping well enough, but that won't last.  It feels a little like there's no end in sight.  I'm not sure how long the emotional exhaustion will last, though I'm sure it can't last forever.  It's all a  part of getting used to a new normal, which is not as good as the old one.  Missing my old life and regretting the future that I'd planned and lost is part of what makes me so tired, and I don't see that changing any time soon.