Blue Monday (noun): A Monday that is depressing or trying especially because of the return to work and routine after a weekend
I always struggle with grief-filled Mondays, my counsellor suggested that it was because Summer died on a Monday, but today I’ve realised, perhaps it’s because it’s my day to reflect?
Mondays invariably follow busy weekends, packed with activity, with little time to think. But on Mondays, it all gets so quiet: normality resumes, distractions subside and reality kicks in. You’d think I’d be used to it by now, but I’m not.
Today has been the lowest day, that I can remember, in a long time. Again, it makes little sense: it comes off the back of a fun and sociable weekend, it’s a beautifully bright and sunny day and yet, I can’t stop crying.
I do know why though, because none of it is the same.
The real world has resumed and I can’t get to the same levels of happy or content that I used to. Social situations that used to make me feel elated, have me walking away feeling relieved, indifferent, numb. I’d describe some interactions as “better than average”, but that’s it. These used to be my favourite things, the things we’ve all been unable to do, for 15 months, the things we’ve all been longing for. But it’s not enough now, everything falls short: not of expectation, but of how it used to feel.
Nothing is as it should be. And normality just means being the childless one.
I can’t help but look at young children and think I should have one too. This is new. I never did this after my first two miscarriages, but it’s approaching four years of trying now. I never used to think of it like that, but now I do: I think that we should have a two or a three year old. The maths is all wrong, but it’s what I keep thinking. Summer is very real to me, and so too is her absence.
Sometimes, I just want to start again. Everything. Not just back to square one, but square zero. Just a complete reset. New friends, new home, new life, everything. More recently, my husband has been saying “it feels like you want me to be the one to end it”, sometimes I think he’s right.
Last year, I wrote this:
Sometimes I wonder, is this all just one big test? Not for me (that would be too obvious), but for you? Am I bashing absolutely everybody so that I can see who’s still standing at the end? Who actually thinks I’m worth it? Or am I just hateful?
And yet I’m the same person who, this year, wrote this:
What the above shows me is that acceptance comes with time. Choices change, but some decisions – such as my life with my husband – remain the same.
It makes no sense. Except, I cannot tell you how little I care about things anymore. I have lost three pregnancies, I have lost friends and I, as a child, lost my dad. I have lost so many of my favourite people, and instead of worrying about losing more, I’ve gone the opposite way now: Who cares? What’s another friend lost? Another relationship? I’ve survived worse.
Not that survival was ever a choice.
Outsiders (well, my head) would say, “that’s not healthy, you need to stop this now”, but I think “this is all perfectly logical, how I feel, is how I feel” I can’t just choose to not be sad, I am sad.
This is a rubbish blog again, but what does it all come down to? The pandemic created a bubble and though I’ve confronted a lot of my grief, there is still a lot of underlying real-world grieving, which has been delayed, only now being faced.
It is one thing to have boundaries in principle, but a whole other, to have them in practice. I do not want to do the things I used to. Life is about to get more difficult, not less. And that’s what I’ve been confronted with, for that’s my new normal.
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I’m so sorry. Three years. It’s just not fair. You are not a bad person. You come across as a good person – a really good person – who bad things have happened to. Check out Modern Loss on instagram – lots there about feeling griefy and Covid. Thinking of you. xxx