days and nights; nights and days

Days and night; nights and days. That's what my life feels like right now. Everything is simply divided by the passage of time. Lately, most of my days have been difficult. Lately, most of my nights have been difficult.

I keep waiting for the pain, grief, sadness, fatigue, and loneliness to ease. I can't find any ease from it. Not even during sleep. I am not sleeping well. When you don't get "good" sleep for several nights running, it begins to take a toll. I actually came home from taking Nick to school on Friday morning and went back to bed. I had one of the worst headaches I have had in a while. A dear friend, whom I was supposed to go help out that morning, urged me to go back to bed and call her later. Well, later came at 11:00 AM. I slept, but it still wasn't good sleep.

My sleep is overrun with dreams of Keith. It seems like I dream of him nearly every night. At first I couldn't remember my dreams, but I when I awoke I had been crying. Then I began to remember my dreams. My dreams were so vivid and realistic that when I woke up, I was disoriented. I did not remember right away that Keith was gone and my dream was simply a dream. The aftermath of those dreams was like reliving Keith's passing all over again. The grief felt as fresh and raw as it was in the very beginning. Now some of my dreams will have something ridiculous in them that I know, as soon as I wake up, that it was indeed just a dream. However, seeing Keith in my dreams whole, healthy, and full of life (even with the nonsense thrown in) is still devastating. Even when I nap, like Friday morning, I dream about Keith.

If there is a night free from dreams, I don't get enough sleep. It's usually after 11:00 or midnight before I can even fall asleep. Then I usually wake up after only a few hours. Most of the time I can go back to sleep, but it isn't too much longer before I'm up with the kids.

I've gone long term without good sleep before. The amount of time I have logged in a hospital has seen to that. I know that eventually the lack of sleep will catch up. I am worried about it catching up. I'm worried about how I will handle needing to rest, but having to care for my kids. Keith has always been there for me to take up where I leave off, to give me a chance to recover and recoup.

What do I do now? How do I do this? I don't have these answers. I don't expect anyone else to have them either. It's just another layer of this new life that I haven't figured out.

I will be meeting with my doctor soon to talk about the physicality of my grief. I still meet with my counselor every Tuesday. I hope these steps are enough to help me find the answers to get through this place that I'm in now.