Why am I writing all this stuff about Tim, anyway?

If y’all haven’t already been asking yourselves why it is exactly that I’m rehashing all of this, why I’m rewriting it, tomorrow’s post will really make you wonder.

Why?

I want to get it all in one place. Right now I have some things in notes on my laptop, which is mostly word-for-word sent in texts to family, and then those things were lightened up and sent to other friends and posted on Facebook, and then I moved over to Caring Bridge, so that I wouldn’t have to be texting some people who weren’t on Facebook and Tim’s family texting other people who weren’t Facebook friends with me. Putting it all here puts it all in one place.

I want to make it public. As I was writing, especially after Tim died, people would tell me how much they appreciated me being so open about the grieving process. Or how much I was helping them with their own grieving process. Multiple people told me I should turn all of this into a book. And while I can’t say that’s completely out of the picture, I can say that I don’t really have the energy for that right now. But I can put everything in one place, and maybe people doing key word searches on Google for how to deal with fear and anger and frustration as they are caretaking for a terminally ill spouse for whom they eventually have to grieve.

I want people to know more of the truth than I was able to say at the time. At the time, a lot of it was heavy. But I couldn’t tell if it was because it was heavy, or I was just so overwhelmed that I thought everything light was heavy. So some of the things that were weighing on me the most, or some of the things that were hard to see, I didn’t talk about on Facebook or Caring Bridge. Later, I found out that many people were genuinely surprised that Tim died. I was genuinely surprised that they were surprised, because it had been painfully obvious to me. Especially that last three weeks or so.

Written Exposure Therapy (WET). This is a form of therapy used for PTSD, and it’s been proven to be extremely useful and helpful. I actually started some WET before he even died, to focus specifically on the trauma of finding him paralyzed in the bathroom. It helped me enough that I wanted to apply it to the experience as a whole. A lot of people have told me how amazed they are at how well I’m processing all of this – most of that I chalk up to my amazing support system, but I must say, the WET is helpful, too.

Huh. I really thought I had more to say about why I’m saying all of this, but those four points really do kind of distill it down. So. There ya go.