Ooooooy.

This week hasn’t been good. I mentioned in Friday’s post that my grandfather is in the hospital. I’ve spent an anxious few days waiting for news and trying to distract myself, which means eating too much junk food and watching the trashiest of trashy reality TV (Temptation Island…). I already wasn’t doing great before this, frustrated with my body and dealing with absolutely horrible doctor’s offices this week. Feeling a bit punchy-stabby, tbh. And starting my cycle on top of all that. TMI? Too bad.

Yeah. My headspace is really toxic right now, y’all. And I’m trying to get out of it. I spent Friday afternoon out with Stephanie to talk things out a little, and then I had a nice hike with friends yesterday morning which helped. But it’s just so much right now.

I don’t deal well with grief. I learned years ago that my brain has a really weird coping mechanism when it comes to grief. Essentially, any time I begin to grieve, there’s a voice that turns on in my head telling me that I’m faking it and my emotions are all for show, so I should STFU because I’m not actually sad. This isn’t an uncommon coping mechanism, and I’ve had it for so long that I know that voice isn’t real. But it’s my brain trying to disconnect and dissociate, and the only way I’ve found to counteract it is to find a silly, unimportant thing to grieve about. Like, when my aunt died in 2007, I was reading a series where one of the characters died at the end of the trilogy. I’d had no idea that the moment was coming, and I ended up bawling my eyes out…then rereading the trilogy to spend more time with that character and crying when he died again. I knew I was really crying for my aunt, but it sidestepped the numb surreality that my brain tried to dissociate me into.

But, you know, you can’t really plan that kind of thing. And honestly, this one is a particularly tough situation because 1) my grandpa’s wishes were for no one to see him in this condition, so we’ve been asked not to come say our goodbyes, and 2) he also wants no funeral or memorial service. So that’s it. It’s just…done. And daaaaamn y’all I’m not handling it well.

When I was a teenager, I once wrote that things that stayed in my head just spin around in circles, growing larger and larger, becoming more and more complicated the longer they stayed inside. You know how people say that when you’re in an argument, you should walk away and cool off for a bit so you can discuss rationally? Yeeaaah not so much. If I have to walk away and just think, it’s going to build and build and become so much worse. My brain is a place of amplification. For better or for worse. So sometimes, I just need to get the thoughts out.

I’m in the process of making big changes in my life right now. I’m going through about a million medical procedures, and trying to work full-time on my health. (I’ve even reopened an old blog from 2012 to discuss this on a more regular basis, because I don’t want this blog to be ALL about health, fitness, or weight.) I’ve made some career-related decisions and had some ah-ha moments with all that. My family world has been f–king rocked and I’m swearing at the pandemic that had me erring on the side of caution for all this time, which now means that I’ll never see my grandpa again. And that’s all just this week. It’s so much. Too much. I feel like I’m spinning. I could really use some time off from my head right now.