Pogre —
Am I going overboard? It's been a year, exactly a year, and this is all hitting me like it was last week. Am I being "normal," or am I being unreasonable? Am I putting too much into dates on a calendar, or is this what most of us go through for the first antiversary?
Unfortunately — you are 100 percent normal at this point.
Your brain is in full on protection mode, because you’re still processing it all.
I think I mentioned it in another post, end of year one sucks. Twelve months in is enough to evoke all the pain, anger and sadness, yet, also enough time to understand you have more work ahead. Knowing you have more healing to do can be daunting, because it gets harder to imagine better days ahead.
I think I looked forward to the numb part of the healing, the plains of lethal flatness, as I was simply exhausted and didn’t want to feel anything.
My wife’s four year A went from EA to PA exactly two weeks after our wedding anniversary, so the dates in my brain were etched in stone. I have to say, there are a couple triggers now and again about the timing of it, but I have completely forgotten about so many other calendar reminders. It does fade, or certainly did for me.
That aside, I don’t think I felt ‘good’ about things across the board until the start of year three.
You start building new days and new memories to focus on as you heal, but man, it takes too long!
