3:35am September 23, 2014

Don’t tell my dad about this but…

…I think the stress is getting to me.

I’m starting to lose interest in stuff that’s normally interesting to me, and that’s never a good sign. I have to force myself to do things. If I weren’t writing poetry right now, I think things would be going very badly for me. The poetry keeps me doing at least one creative thing, and without creativity I can’t function at all. But no crochet, and that’s really hard, not crocheting. It’s like it’s left a hole where it used to be.

My dad doesn’t want the grief to do horrible things to me, and I understand his point of view, but I don’t know how to grieve in any other way.

I’m getting signed up for a support group around here for caregivers of people who are dying. I didn’t think I qualified as a caregiver, but they said anyone who gives emotional support qualifies as a caregiver for their purposes, and I’ve certainly been doing that – I’ve been helping my father deal with his fear of dying, and trying to show him that love is the only way through any of this that will ever work for any of us. Advice I need to remember for myself. I was surprised at the lack of general grief support groups in my area, despite a huge huge list of support groups for practically everything at my local hospital. You’d think with the amount of people dying there, there’d be not just one but many grief support groups, but there really aren’t any generic ones.

It would be nice to be able to talk to other people who are going through this, without having to talk specifically to my family who are also going through this and who all have their own intertwined baggage about it. I’m not generally a support group type person, but desperate times call for desperate measures, I guess. And I will try anything that might help with the stress, because stress is public enemy #1 when you have adrenal insufficiency. I don’t want to go to a therapist (ever, again, in my life, if I can help it), so a support group seems like the safest option.