Dear Diary: Am I Normal?

On the 4th October 2019 my husband, Kurt, took his own life. From that day I have been told by everyone around me it takes time. Grief is a rollercoaster. Grief under the circumstances of Kurt's suicide is even more complex and there are added layers to it all. I've been told that what I have been through is very traumatic and one day it will hit me and I will feel the enormity and complexity of the situation. I am nearly 5 months on from that day and so far, my feeling and opinion hasn't changed and I think that's because how I deal with things is slightly different to other people.

I have spent this weekend pacing up and down a room trying, for the first time in my life to make sense of who I am in a world where I am constantly being told how to feel. In my small life of 32 years I have been through a lot. Not as much as some people, but still more than I would have liked. I have been raped twice, I have been in an a physically abusive relationship as well as an emotionally abusive relationship, I have been made homeless, I have had an ectopic pregnancy, I have done CPR on my husband, I have had to pick my dog up off the road after he was run over, I've had to rehome another dog. I've had to watch people walk out of my life when I didn't want them to. I've had to change who I was as a person in order to make another person happy. I've had to live with seizures (NEAD). I've lost my independence and I've had to talk someone out of suicide over the phone.

In every single one of these situations I have remained calm, logical and accepted what has happened. So many people have tried to tell me that I have suppressed the ordeal and the emotions and I haven't dealt with them but I have another theory. I think and I believe I have dealt with them. I believe that I am able to process things so quickly and acceptance comes so quickly after each of these situations that although I may cry and I do feel pain, that feeling doesn't last as long as other people may feel it. For a long time, especially after the death of my husband, I have felt like I was weird. I have felt that there is something wrong with me because although I cry and feel pain, I don't and haven't to the extent I would have expected. I've read other peoples stories about how they feel after they have found someone after suicide and not once have I been able to relate to them because I feel I have accepted and processed so quickly my journey is a lot more forward than most.

I am not a cold person either. I am full of love, empathy, compassion, patience and understanding. My family and friends are blown away by how I can deal with situations and my job means I must be caring and compassionate. I have emotions by the bucket fulls and I cry at adverts! When something big and 'traumatic' happens in my life the pattern is almost always the same: Something bad has happened: what does this mean to me: how do I process it: move on. I don't have emotional baggage or hold grudges of the past. I accept everything that has happened to me as a process and journey of life and if these are actions that are out of my control, it holds no place in my life. If for some reason I am caused pain as a result of my own actions and things that are in my control then that is where I show my emotions.

I have been having seizures for the past 17 years and these seizures, in the most part, are a result of actions on my part. Either that be a lack of self care, unspoken truth or putting myself in situations I am not comfortable with at the expense of someone else's feelings. In a weird and wonderful way, this is how I process the small stuff. Because I can deal with the big stuff easily and the big events in my life end up holding no relevance in my life, I worry a lot about the small stuff. It should be the other way around but I worry about the things that are in my control. I guess one would argue that I have control issues but I don't feel like I do. I feel like I have respect for my life, respect for who I am and my values and when that is compromised it can throw me into a spin.

I guess my point is to introduce me to you and try and show that in a world where we are told how to feel, some of us can look at the situation and say "I don't feel like that. Am I not normal?" and my response would be that you are very normal. We are all different and there are no set rules to being normal but if you are you and you do what's right to you then yes, you are normal. I feel sometimes, that although I can't retain information, I'm quite intelligent.... sometimes I feel a bit stupid because I can't remember stuff. But what I do know is that I can run through a lot of information all at once, and come to a conclusion very quickly. I didn't know this was different until I talked it through with someone who thought the same as me and pointed out it's not how everyone else thinks. I've never met anyone who thinks the same as me and it was very surreal. We have commented how we are twins because to nearly everything we have said about ourselves, our journeys and who we are as a person we can relate and pretty much mirror image. Its very scary and brings a whole host of problems when you can look at someone and see your reflection. That is what has brought me here. Understanding fully who I am as a person in a world that doesn't seem to understand me.