Thread: dealing with a loss- 697 words

OK, so I have a tough time posting anything for others to read. Only because I am a perfectionist and can never live up to the expectations that I set for myself, which has held me back in writing for a VERY long time now. So here goes, any feedback would be appreciated.

Dealing With Loss

I miss Charlie. He has been part of my life for a year now. Well, he was until the other day. Happy birthday to me; Charlie will be removed from your life. He actually showed up in my life last year on my birthday. I didn’t know what to make of him, but whatever was going on between us was definitely serious. I even brought him with me when I moved to Maui last year. I will admit, there were some times when he acted up, and I was stuck staying home with him when I could have been out on adventures, but he was a part of me that I couldn’t ignore if I wanted to.

Charlie is gone now. He was taken from me a few days ago, and I find myself struggling to recover from the loss. Oddly, I am in much less pain than I expected. I actually feel numbness in his place. I don’t cry, I don’t feel overwhelming pain, just a sense of lacking. I knew I was in a state of shock the day he was taken. I was worn out, tired, and didn’t know what to think. I wasn’t surprised by the lack of hurting, and I expected the following days to be excruciating. I thought that by day three, I would be on the ground trying everything that I could to forget the pain. I do feel something, but it’s more of a sense of discomfort that seems to come with the numbness. I feel like something should be there, and I don’t know how to deal with the fact that it’s not.

I have found myself eating more lately. I feel like eating twice as much will fill the hole that I have been left with since Charlie has gone. I don’t know if it really will, but it seems like the only logical thing for me to do. I have actually found myself eating more than twice as much in the morning than I usually would all day. Every time the slightest feeling of hunger hits me, I find myself preparing a feast. I get excited about having my favorite foods. I’ve even found myself making food for later when I’m not even hungry. I think that maybe I will need to eat in the middle of the night, especially if I can’t sleep.

I have been taking pain killers since my loss, too. I don’t know how else to deal with the discomfort. I want to move on with my life, and forget about everything that has happened, but I feel like I need to take painkillers just to sit down. I have a doctor’s appointment today, and I need to take some just to deal with the car ride across town. Even the simplest situation causes me to remember what I am missing, and I just don’t want to feel anything close to that. I just want to get past this and never have to worry about it again. I even have to take them to get to sleep. I have been taking them constantly since I lost him. I feel like if I let any pain or discomfort arise, it will take too much to get rid of it.

Charlie was the name that I gave to a pylonidal cyst that I have been dealing with for a year now. It has gotten worse over time until it was necessary for a doctor to remove a large portion of my flesh in order to completely remove the cyst. As a result, many of the nerves in that area on my buttocks were destroyed or removed in the surgery, leaving me with a strange discomfort but general lack of pain. I have been told to eat as much as I can, especially protein, in order to give my body what it needs to replace the large hole in my body. And the pain killers have been amazing in helping me return to my normal life. I am told that while it will take three to six months for the wound to heal completely, I will be able to return to work within a week.

I picked immediately that Charlie wasn’t a person. Cheat that I am, I skipped through to the end to get to the bottom of things (no pun intended). And that gave me a far, far greater appreciation of what you’d written, as I too have been there. In my case, 47 years ago.

Your writing, per se, seemed about as good as it gets. There’s nothing wrong with being a perfectionist. I’m one of those, too.

If the story’s true, I’m surprised. Surgical techniques seem to have gone backwards over the last half-century. My cyst was as bad as they get, and there was no hole. Admittedly I did have a 3-week recovery period of lying on my side, but definitely no hole.

Reading your story has brought back memories of one of the nursing staff. There might be a story in that. So thanks.

thanks ox, actually I have been working on soemthing regarding the hospital staff that I have been having some fun with. I am jealous of all the people who had the easier recovery, but since my mother is a nurse, they decided that having the wound repacked by a professional every day is more effective to prevent future infections.

But medical talk aside, thanks for the feedback. I am glad that I finally got something posted, and i'm slightly more comfortable than I was yesterday posting my work. Now I just have to stick with it and keep writing. Thanks again, dude