Busyhead: Anxiety as a symptom of grief

My head is full of bees. Thoughts hum constantly and without direction.

Grief has been the strangest animal for me. Perhaps, in part, because what I am experiencing is a sort of “grief from a distance,” which has a character neither easier nor harder than any other grief, simply different. I lost both my parents after several years of living apart from them and seeing them only once or twice a year. I lost my much-loved sister-in-law who lived in the same general area as my parents, so was also not regularly in her presence.

My Big Dog, he was a daily, all-day presence and utterly dependent on me. With his ashes on my dresser, he remains a daily, all-day presence. I still feel his silken ear on my lap every day.

I am still processing all these losses but I think, some days, I’m getting a handle on my grief. I may think, “Oh, I don’t think of Momma as much anymore, perhaps I’m healing” or “I cry less when I see pictures of Big Dog or notices his ashes.”

Then suddenly a day comes when I’m having panic attacks and feeling indescribably lonely and lost and I can’t understand why. I look at my life and it is all well and good. I am healthy and loved and fed and clothed. I lack for nothing really. But something gnaws at me until I can barely breathe and I look for comfort and peace in every corner of my world and fail to find it.

And one morning as I am sifting through the confusion and anxiety I stumble on the answer—I am still grieving.

And in this grief, I have a new enemy—Isolation. No one can grieve with me. Grief, like death, is a lonesome event. It does little good to have someone say, “Yes, I feel that way, too.”

And in this isolation, I find only more panic. Panic itself is isolating and a sort of cycle of terror sets in that can’t be interrupted by simple measures.

I have taken up bicycling.

I focus on training the new dog.

I listen to music as if it is a hard drug to which I am heavily addicted.

I stay away from television as much as possible as it seems to increase my anxiety.

I clean a lot. (Yay! Says the husband)

I have said goodbye too many times over the last several years.

I’ll do it again before I get to heal because, well, you never really heal. I know it can’t be helped. It’s part of getting older. I will still rail against it.

I disappear into my head with the bees. I don’t know if the bees will ever leave.

Last Updated on December 29, 2022 by Lee Ellis