TimeHop retrospective

I have this little app on my iPad called TimeHop.  Mostly in the few years I have had it, it has been a fun but disappointing toy.  Every day the app gathers your posts from social media sites from years past and sends them to you to remind you of where you were and what you were doing on the same day in other years.  The disappointing part is that before this year, it didn't seem to go back more than 4 or very occasionally 5 years.   Every day I would look at it hoping to see some kind of gift of from the past, but nothing much came up except things to remind me that I live quite a routine life. 

This year the app is a little more powerful, but still disappointing.  It has been showing me 6 and occasionally 7 years old posts, but they are still only my posts and what I am noticing is that 7 years ago I was a queen of vague posts and at least this month (July) all of my posts from six years ago were vague, sad, or about my lack of sleep. 

All of these reminders of what I felt like, the things I said and did, have me thinking back at the newest, freshest grief through the eyes of experience and time.  It took me a long time to figure out why I couldn't sleep.  You would think that grief would have made me exhausted and I would fall in bed as soon as possible, but it didn't work that way.  I was exhausted, but night after night I sat up most of the night. 

I didn't know what I was waiting for.  I would just get more and more tired and my thoughts and my posts would get more and more jagged and crazy.  Logic would say that escaping into sleep would be the best and easiest thing to do.

I knew I wasn't doing myself any good, but I just couldn't make myself go to bed.  I would lay down for a few minutes and decide I needed to get back up.  I searched through Facebook and reread everything that people sent.  I didn't know what I was searching for or what I hoped would happen.  I posted weird random thoughts...many of which I deleted the next day because they were just too raw. 

I think if you had asked me then, I might have said I was waiting for Michaela to come home.  Or for something to happen to prove to me that it wasn't real.  Or for some sign of where she is now and that she is ok.  Maybe that was some of it.  I'm not sure now.  I still look for those things, and love it when I get a little surprise, but mostly I sleep ok. 

These clips don't show the time I posted them the way TimeHop does.  All of these were posted very late at night.  When I was up for no apparent reason, doing nothing, looking for something, and very, very alone. 

A few days ago I woke up very, very sad for no apparent reason (anniversary?).  And suddenly I knew why I didn't sleep for so long.  While it may be true that I was hoping for something or looking for something, I don't think that is why I couldn't sleep.  I think I couldn't sleep because I didn't want to wake up.

Waking up was the absolute worst part of my day.  I woke up feeling terrible.  My body felt heavy and pushed down by gravity.  I couldn't breath right.  I was looking directly into another long day of hopelessness.  The sadness of the morning was overwhelming.  And I had to get up and move.  People still depended on me to do things, be places, act like a human being.  That was so much harder than seemed possible during those first minutes of morning.  So, although I was exhausted, I felt better at night, when nobody expected anything from me and I didn't expect anything from myself, when the day was over, not staring at me daring me to get up and face it; although I was still sad at night, it was bearable.  And as long as I was awake, I wasn't waiting to wake up again to that same heavy weight of the expectations of a new day. 

I sleep better now, most of the time.  I don't wake up burdened by the impossibility of every day.   Those early days (years) of foggy thinking and walking through jello instead of air have mostly passed.  I will always miss my daughter.  I will always be looking for those little gifts...I even got one today.  I'm not writing this because I am sad; I am writing this because I am ok. 

But I wasn't. I wasn't ok yet except for vague, sad, and unhelpful posts, I tried very hard to just be the competent and happy person I had been.  I didn't give many people a chance to help me and I didn't give myself much time to help myself and unfortunately, the universe didn't give me much time to take care of myself before throwing more at me, but even with all of that things do get better and become manageable. 

Like that one legged woman on the bicycle, you adjust and learn to balance again.