Well, here I am at Year 3 of my grief journey (which doesn’t officially start until March 6, 2023). 671 days ago my life was forever changed. 671 days ago my aspirations became distant memories. 671 days ago my future evaporated in one last breath. To say it has been a hard 2 years would be putting it mildly. The first year was…..you know I don’t really remember a lot from year one. Everything is a blur and my memories are very hazy and non-sensical in my head. I have no idea what I did. I have no idea what I said to people. I have no idea about the entire year. But one thing I do know is the pain. A pain that I wouldn’t wish on anyone and a pain that I don’t think anyone understands unless you have lost a spouse. A pain where ripping off my own skin would hurt less than the pain I was feeling inside. Raw, tearing pain shooting through every part of my body. This was not just a mental pain. This was physical. It hurt to exist. Everything I would see would trigger an emotional reaction which would then travel down every muscle and nerve causing everything to ache all at one time. Every smell would send me into a downward spiral. Every song would have me beating my head against a wall wanting the memories to just stop. Wanting everything to just stop. It was hard. At week 5 of year one I started documenting the weeks on video. This was very helpful because it gave me something to do besides sit in the pain all day. Working full-time (I still have no idea how I created anything, much less created art and animations that are shown nightly on Cinderella Castle) and documenting the struggles of grief was very helpful for me. It not only allowed me to get my feelings out but it also allowed me to watch back the vids to see how far I had come from the beginning of this journey. I could say to myself “today might be bad but look at where you were 4 weeks ago. You aren’t as bad as that.”. The days progressed and soon it was time for Sean’s memorial celebration. I can’t remember anything from that day except the feeling of love. It was warm and welcoming. A feeling that I hadn’t felt since Sean died. It was amazing. And then the celebration ended…

and all of that love was gone…

from death….to empty…to love…to empty yet again…

That moment threw me into a darkness that is hard to describe. A darkness that wanted to eat me. If you have ever been in suicidal darkness, you understand. Your brain works against you and all you can think about is how the world would be better off without you in it. You don’t consciously say these things to yourself but that’s all you hear. Over and over and over. Turning on music so loud just to drown out the voices but even that doesn’t work. Take those thoughts, add in the physical pain from grief, and I was ready to say goodbye forever. This world betrayed me by taking the one thing that meant more to me than anything else on this planet so why keep up this façade that everything is ok and stay in it?

It was a rough time. Really rough. I have never had suicidal ideation before and having it go from passive to active ideation in a matter of hours was very scary.

The best way I can explain how this felt was like driving through a very dark tunnel that never ends. You start out, outside in the daylight and you can see the tunnel opening getting closer and closer. You can feel your hands tighten on the steering wheel as the tunnel gets larger and closer. You enter the tunnel and it seems instantly the entrance light is getting farther and farther away, until it’s merely a small white dot behind you and then you are completely plunged into darkness. A darkness that is unfamiliar and never ends. And then all of a sudden, a small light appears in front of you and you can see the exit. That exit is where you have peace, where you have love, where you have happiness. But no matter how fast you drive or how long you drive, you NEVER reach the end. The little light is always there taunting you that happiness is right there but you will never reach it. You use to have it but now all you have is this darkness. With hope decreasing by the second, you have to choose: 1) do you keep driving towards the light that never seems to be getting closer or 2) stop the car and let the darkness consume you forever?

It’s really difficult to be reliving those moments. I can still feel that pain like it is happening in real time. It was horrible but I was pulled out of that moment by some great friends. I can honestly say I owe them my life.

I was able to pull myself together from that moment. I threw myself into work and really tried to keep my head in a positive place. I felt like I was turning a corner in the grief journey and then all of a sudden social media blew me off course in a major way. I have always had a love/hate relationship with social media since we started our YouTube channel. Actually, most people assume that it was me who loved being on the socials but in actuality, Sean was the strength behind everything. Social media brings out some of the best things about the internet but unfortunately, with the good, also comes the bad. I have come to expect the negative/nasty comments. Those come in daily and have no effect on me anymore. You go through a time where the words said hurt but that skin thickens fast when you are in the public eye. At this moment not much really surprised me when it came to social media however, little did I know that I was about to have the wind knocked out of me by someone I trusted…someone I called a friend. Already in a very weakened state, this betrayal sent my brain into full panic mode and sent me spiraling into a nervous breakdown. My brain was shutting down and I could feel that tunnel of darkness getting closer and closer again. At this point I knew I needed help outside of my friend group and set out to find a professional therapist. I knew this was beyond what a grief counselor could provide and it was at this moment that I began my mental health journey.

I wish I could say this mental health journey was all flowers and rainbows but it was terrifying. I was terrified that I was unable to talk myself through dark situations and I was super terrified to take anti-depressant medication. In my mind, both of these things equaled failure. I failed at controlling my own mind so badly that here I was needing these external things just to come back to center. I was terrified but now, sitting here a year later, it was the best thing that ever could have happened.

Therapy helped me learn new ways to cope with my feelings. Ways to come out of that dark tunnel and put myself back in the light. I always had Sean there to help me through the lows but now I had to learn how to do that myself. My fears about medication were slowly eased by my therapist who kept reassuring me that my brain needed a little help to come back to where it was before Sean died. I learned that my mind went into a fight/flight mode when Sean died and I lived in that mode for over a year before getting help. This enhanced state of mind became my new normal. Sleeping 3-4 hours every night. Muscles tense every hour of the day. This was everyday for over a year and my body thought this was how it was. For me, the medication allowed my body to finally take a breath. I finally started to sleep longer and longer, I started to feel my muscles relaxing and my brain was finally able to get some relief.

Saying all of that I do want to say that medication is not a cure all. It doesn’t stop the pain. It doesn’t stop me from crying. It doesn’t stop me from feeling feelings. What it does do is allow my brain to have a lower baseline for me to return to after I have a mental break. What does that mean…well the way I look at is this – my mental health is like me standing on the side of cliff with the ocean roaring down below. There are moments everyday when I am pushed into those swirling waters. A memory. A smell. A song. Anything can send me flying over that edge. The medication steps in by providing me a lower ledge to climb back up on to take a break from the water and then, as the mental episode is winding down, I can slowly climb back up to the original top ledge again. Without that ledge in the middle, the hopelessness of not being able to make it back to the top is too much to bear and the feelings that you should just let go, take over.

Please do not take this as an endorsement for taking anti-depressants. I wanted to tell my story and how they have helped me. Please talk to your doctor about all the side effects and especially talk to your doctor about what will happen when you decide to not need them any longer. Anti-depressants are not something you can just quit taking. There are protocols that must be followed in order to wean off of them. It is possible to stop taking them but be aware that it is not always that easy.

Shoo, I know that was a lot but I had to get that out and written down. I don’t want to forget what I have been through (not that I possibly could) but it is part of my journey through grief. It is how I have gotten here to year 3 and it will be part of me forever.

Year 1 into Year 2

Where year one was full of pain and had me just going through the motions of life, Year 2 slammed into me harder than I ever thought possible. I had been through all the firsts. The first anniversary without Sean. The first birthdays without Sean. The first Christmas without Sean. I thought, Year Two can’t possibly be as hard. I could not have been farther from the truth. Year Two was the year where everything came back into reality and my brain was starting to process the fact that this is it. Sean is never coming back. You will be doing this on your own forever now.

It was such a mind fuck. I just went through a year of the most painful pain I could ever imagine and now I was experiencing a whole new set of firsts. I didn’t think my body could take any more and then all of a sudden these new things were flooding my brain. It’s like my brain was finally realizing that this was the new normal and my brain didn’t want anything to do with it. Instead of living day to day, I was now thinking about what I had to do in the future and looking around seeing what I haven’t done. It was very overwhelming. It was like a fog was lifted and what was left was an apocalyptic wasteland of failures from the previous year. All I could see was what I hadn’t done. You want to talk about brain shut down. I was holding it together about as easy as it is to tie two pieces of string that are on fire together. Yeah I wasn’t doing great. One thing that got me through Year Two was getting back to travel. With the help of some great friends, I was able to conquer fears of travel, and solo travel, and was able to get back to what Sean & I loved most. It was unbelievable to be back on the ocean and to my surprise, allows me to feel closer to Sean than I could ever imagine. Every ship I sail on, I can feel Sean right behind me. I can even feel that while watching the new YouTube videos I was creating.

But with this amazing light from traveling, there was also an associated darkness. That old saying “what goes up, must come down” is the best way to describe how it feels on this grief roller coaster and it is something that I have come to understand after I experience happiness of any kind. I now equate happiness to a drug. That probably sounds weird but happiness is something I crave now. And when I have it, traveling with some amazing friends for example, it is the biggest high. I feel alive. I feel happy. I feel like me.

And then the trip is over and poof! …. that high is gone and I am thrust back into a world of being alone again. I go through a period of detox: depression feelings come back, I cry, I feel hopeless and I feel very alone. This happens after EVERY SINGLE friend interaction and just like detoxing from a drug that you crave, the longer I am in that “happiness”, the more extreme the detox. Go to lunch, detox maybe an hour that night. Have a movie night, detox for a few more hours. Spend a week on the ocean with great friends, detox at least the next 48 hours when I come home. I never knew happiness could be a drug but it most certainly is now. When you don’t have something daily and then happiness is showered down upon you, your mind doesn’t ever want to step outside of that.

Learning how to manage all of these new “detox” feelings dominated most of my Year Two. I knew that hiding away wasn’t healthy so I learned how to push through these painful endings to see friends. I don’t have any magic tricks for pushing through. It was more of a grit your teeth and tread water through the wave until I was able to get my feet on dry land again.

Ringing in Year 3

Year Two started off really rocky but by the end, I was starting to anticipate painful events, I was able to learn how long it takes me to “happiness detox” and I was learning how to live by myself. And just like so many times through this grief journey, right at that moment when I think I have everything under control, the bottom falls out and I am thrown back into darkness.

Even though I have been learning how to detox from my happy moments, one thing that I didn’t plan on or anticipate was the detox needed to get through 4 solid weeks of happiness. I knew it was going to be sad but I had no idea how a whole month of being around people was going to effect me.

Besides having my mental break and needed to seek out professional help early in the year, December 2022 was my second toughest month of 2022. At the beginning of December I just came back from my fourth solid week at sea. And even though two of those weeks were doing more work than I have ever done before on the Disney Fantasy, I had four weeks of not being alone. 31 days of constant interaction. 31 days of laughter. 31 days of happiness. Add in the holidays of December and my world was getting darker by the second after stepping off that last ship.

The pain from being alone that flooded back was unbearable. I was right back in that same pain as I was when Sean died. The feeling of emptiness was overwhelming and I didn’t have anything to keep living for.

One of the things that helped ground me during Year One was work. It was the one thing that gave me daily purpose. Yes I was working insane 16-18 hour work days, but that work was therapy for me. When I came back from my last cruise, work was non-existent. It was the holidays so I understand why the work was gone but for me, I needed that to keep going each morning. That was gone in December and I was left with no work and just my thoughts.

I am nowhere near as fragile as I was a year ago but I’m not strong enough yet to fight my own brain at times. December became my brain kryptonite. Thoughts telling me that I am a waste of oxygen because I will never truly be happy again. Telling me that everyone is having a great holiday season and I am sitting here alone and I will always be alone. Telling me that I will never be happy. Telling me over and over and over again that this world would be better without me in it.

Now I know these thoughts are not me. I don’t feel this way but while I was detoxing from 4 weeks of people-ing, my brain was betraying me and making me think horrible things that always ended with me taking my own life. Did I call anyone, of course I didn’t. Should I have called someone, of course I should have. But that is not how your brain works in this moment. You feel like you are the biggest burden on everyone around you and this is even more heightened during the holidays because this is suppose to be a happy time of year and all I am is a big ball of negative. I didn’t want to put that on anyone so I took it all upon myself to get through this on my own.

It was a tough detox but I did it. Looking back a part of me wishes I would have reached out to a friend. I tend to shut down, shut everyone out and internalize everything. It isn’t healthy and I am learning how to lean on others to help me through the low moments. At this point I would give myself an F in reaching out and leaning on others. I am hoping to bring that grade up a bit. I didn’t rely on anyone except myself until Sean. Sean broke down those walls and taught me that it was safe to rely on him. I will keep telling myself that it also ok to lean on friends and I hope one day I will believe that in my mind.

Goodbye 2022…Hello 2023

So here it is, the first week of 2023 so why I am getting all of this out? The shortest answer – it’s a new year and a new start.

The longer answer is I feel like I have turned a corner in this grief journey. I still cry and I still hurt but it is changing and I am growing. One of the biggest things that I have seen change in the past two years, I am now looking to the future. I haven’t thought about the future since 2020 when Sean was diagnosed. It probably sounds like a silly thing but it is a huge change in my thinking. No longer thinking that the world would be better off without me but instead, now thinking how can I make this world a better place and how can I work to fulfill all the dreams that Sean & I had together.

I have learned that time escapes me very fast in this post-Sean world. I have all these plans in my head but then the days fly by and I haven’t done anything. In order to keep myself on a weekly track, I want to document each week as I push through this third year of grief. I have plans and goals but if I don’t keep myself accountable, I am never going to accomplish them. So here’s to saying goodbye to 2022 and here’s to saying hello to all the possibilities that 2023 has to offer. I know I won’t accomplish everything I set out but as long as I am moving, I will feel like I am accomplishing something and not sitting still in pain and grief.

(And if you wondering about the video at the beginning. Music has become the soundtrack of my life and each of these posts will follow the theme of that song for the week. I feel like music helps me say the feelings that I just can’t quite articulate sometimes. This year I will compile these songs week by week and in 52 weeks, I will have an entire compilation of songs that represent this year of growth. Feel free to join me in making your own life soundtrack. I can’t wait to listen back to all these songs that defined each week of 2023)