I seem to be settling into what Boolean logic enthusiasts would classify as a “don’t care” state. I am losing my passion for things I had become rather passionate about after losing Kim – weight loss, fitness, posture, reading, Bible studies… Not even politics excites me much of late. I look around the house and see things that I need to do to it, and things that I want to do to it, but can’t motivate myself to start any of them.

I thought “Huh! I wonder if you can burn out simply through grieving?” A quick search on the internet, and, Doctor? I think we have our diagnosis. This article in Psychology Today sums what I’ve been up to pretty well. The “DO IT ALL IMMEDIATELY” bit cited by the author resonates. It resonates all too well.

I think for the surviving half, the fragility and finite nature of life become driving concepts. I want to get the mortgage paid off and a trust written to ease the kids’ burden when I go. I want to finish updating this house because it’s gone too long as it is, and is showing the abuse, I need to do my taxes, and the kids’ taxes. I need to… This article helped put it into perspective for me as well.

There are so many things that I need to get done, and I keep piling more and more on the list until, tada! I have ground to a veritable halt on all of it. The added tasks – and not getting them done – pile more and more stress on an already stressed psyche.

Another apt point is that we, the bereaved, don’t realize that that loss has been such a stressor. I never equated the loss of Kim with stress. Just sadness. I equated all the little tasks that the loss of her added to my docket as stressors, but not the loss itself.

Now to figure out how to regroup and deploy myself differently.