Too much country music ... so I am taking some time and trying to not die again.
I should hopefully be back to some version of normal .. soon .. I pray. Just missing Nik terribly and really not doing great in the "get over it" department. I don't think I have ever loved him more .. and it just seems horrifyingly counter-intuitive.
So .. I guess here's this .. the words are more relevant than the video ..
Okay .. so .. I have a dirty little secret. A dirty little email secret.. dirty little email - okay Gmail chat secret. I still had Nik in there.
I had removed him - originally - immediately after the shit hit the fan on July 6th. I also deleted all his pictures, removed all his numbers from my cell phone and deleted his address at work, at home and at his parents home in San Diego and basically nuked every email - except for the last one. I felt that one was important to keep .. apparently for a reminder when my head gets clear enough to actually read it for what it says. ...
Seriously. Would it be easier to cope if I just decided to kill Nik in my mind? Imagine a death for him .. imagine a lovely funeral and then move on with my life with him "dead" - so I don't have to think about what and who he is doing now?
This situation I am in now is no less permanent than him being deceased, the way I look at it. He could care less about whether I am alive or dead .. so why should I feel the same about him? [Yes .. I know .. but please stop reminding me that I think I am in love with him. How can I be in love with someone who is clearly not in love with me? I can't. Though I have my degree in Philosophy .. Logic is failing me .. BIG TIME!!]
One of my girlfriends out put it thusly when she was talking me off the ledge recently, "So .. what he did was he basically called you a gold-digging fatty. Why in the hell would you think he even remotely gives a shit about you? He is probably banging his yoga-bitch roommate. Hello? Does the writing on the wall need to be day-glo orange for you to actually see it?" At the time, I thought she was being kindly cruel to shock me in to the reality of my situation. But now I see .. she was probably not cruel out of kindness .. she was cruel out of reality.
As I was sitting there and praying this was one more in a long line of delays in my future with Nik .. she was pointing out very clearly that he wants no such future with me. She even was so bold as to repeatedly point out the quote he made about imagining a future without me. Her exact words were something akin to, "Jesus C! He told you he wanted you out of his life at that moment. He essentially dumped you at that exact moment and was too much of a coward to make it clear to you. Wake the fuck up." I say "akin" because too much honesty was making me hysterically deaf at the moment all this was going on.
But .. what ever is wrong with me - complex grief or whatever, I don't seem to grasp or want to believe that is what is actually going on here.
Yep .. knee deep in denial.
As I promised this morning I would, I listened to the BBC 4 program "The Pain of Emotion" and managed to transcribe the 29 minute program in a little under a hundred years! Alright, not a hundred years .. but over the last 9 hours .. it has been allocated the majority of my time. it was actually nice not to think about Nik that much today .. as it is the first day in the last few weeks I have not wanted to crawl into a hole and die. So .. I guess that is something.
In places where I figure non-British folks might be going "Wha??," I have linked to items referred to herein. Most especially, Piper Alpha. I still clearly remember when that disaster took place and remembered thinking with horror of the men who might have been trapped in the crew housing complex as it was blow off the rig and to the bottom of the North Sea. [And no .. the ironic date of the twentieth anniversary hasn't escaped me. It was July 6th, 2008.]
But .. without to much more delay .. here is the transcription of "The Pain of Emotion" broadcast July 21, 2008 on BBC Radio 4.
The Pain of Emotion: BBC Radio 4 TranscriptionAnnouncer: “Well now it’s time for tonight’s science documentary “The pain of emotion” Vivienne Parry reports on the latest research on the similarities of physical and mental pain.”
“Sonnet” by Edna St. Vincent Millay, as read by Juliet Stevenson: “Time does not bring relief; you all have lied, Who told me time would ease me of my pain! I miss him in the weeping of the rain; I want him at the shrinking of the tide… There are a hundred places where I fear to go, – so with his memory they brim. And entering with relief some quiet place where never fell his foot or shone his face I say, 'There is no memory of him here!' And so stand stricken, so remembering him!”
Vivienne Parry: Heartbreak is the stuff of poetry, of songs, of art. We talk about our hearts being broken when a love affair ends or when someone we love dies. Heartbreak is overwhelming and it can be so painful. But that is where science and art part company. Emotional pain has never been thought of in the same way as physical pain, like breaking a leg or having a baby. But that is now beginning to change, as neuroscience reveals the remarkable similarities in the way emotional and physical pain are experienced in the brain. In the past, the British way of coping with pain was to prescribe a stiff upper lip, along with a does of pull yourself together. But now it is recognized that this sort of pain does need treatment. It doesn’t get any more extreme than that experienced by Mark Stephen. He is a well -known broadcaster, particularly in Scotland. In July of 1995, he was driving a tractor while haymaking and accidentally hit his young daughter. She died shortly afterwards. From that moment, his life fell apart.
Mark Stephen: “Within a few days, I started being frightened to go to sleep at night ..um .. because I was getting really bad dreams. During the day I was getting flashbacks. When people hear flashbacks they think “Oh of course .. you are remembering.” I read an article quite recently that said the process of memory is we remember the emotional response to stimuli. I don’t know whether that is medically valid or not. But .. I can run with it. And a flashback is just that .. you are back in that instant with all the sense of horror and helplessness and anxiety and stress and everything else. And it just comes back immediately. It’s not that you are hallucinating, it is not that you are seeing that incident happening in front of you. It’s just whatever is happening around you, your emotions are running through that process again and you have no control over it what so ever.”
The short answer is yes.
According to "The Pain of Emotion" .. the heartbreak of bereavement can not only make you feel like you are dying, it can actually make you die. [This is not news to me .. I feel like my heart is physically in pieces. And it is not lost on me that new diet and exercise regime aside .. my Blood Pressure is ridiculously elevated. Yes .. I would say having felt it before .. I am currently dying.]
It is a pain in your chest .. nausea .. a feeling that at any moment your heart could stop beating. Bereavement feels like death, like it is actually breaking your heart. And according to the article "The Pain of Emotion," in some instances the increased adrenalin and stress can actually cause heart problems:
But can we die from a broken heart?Martin Cowie is professor of cardiology at the Brompton Hospital. He is very sure of the answer: "Yes, we can.
"There is an increased risk of dying in the six months after bereavement and it's particularly marked amongst men."
The bereaved are much more likely to be involved in accidents, which is perhaps understandable, but also to die from heart attacks and stroke. The hormones involved in the stress of bereavement make these events more likely.
This knowledge makes it essential to identify and treat those whose emotional pain is likely to become chronic, causing debilitating depression or even death.
