Where is this “inner strength” I’m supposed to develop?  Where is the “new normal?”  When do I stop catapulting between wanting to sleep forever and being unable to close my eyes?  When do I get to see my living boy as more than the one who lived?  When do I get to be ME again?  Do I ever get to be me again or this horrible shrew who just explodes at the slightest provocation?  When will I stop being pulled betw

een anger and exhaustion?  All this crap about “experience the grief and it will make you stronger” doesn’t help me one bit.  I can’t look at her things, they sit there like macabre ornaments, this weird little box, an urn, and two plaster hearts – that’s all I have left.  I can’t feel her presence, there’s no assurance that she’s reborn, nothing, I can’t feel anything anymore.  I just want to cry myself to sleep.  Things are falling apart at the seams, more and more the world just seems unreal, unbalanced.  It’s a gorgeous day outside and I’m inside ready to scream, the house is a filthy disgusting hovel and I can’t seem to motivate myself to clean it, I have no appetite but I stuff myself with whatever I can find in the fridge because it’s something to do to try and fill the hole.  I make sweets and gobble them.  I make tons of noodles, potatoes, quesadillas, beans.  I eat what’s on my plate, I go back for seconds, I eat my son’s leftovers too.  It’s got to stop or I’ll be Gilbert Grape’s mother and have a heart attack when I try to return to some kind of normal.  I now weigh 315 pounds. I'll admit it - maybe that will help. My old workout t-shirts, which were huge so I could sweat unobserved (even in shape I was not a skinny minnie), now cling to the huge fat rolls I’ve developed.  Food isn’t the answer.  The problem is that I don’t know what the answer is. I'm not even sure what the question is anymore.  Six months out and I'm drowning, just drowning, just when everyone assumes I'm supposed to be "all better."