Lara's death hit me pretty hard. Or, to be more accurate, it was the tipping point; the straw that broke the camel's back and other such cliches: the bad thing happening that caused all the other bad things in my head to overflow, boil over and spill out like some sort of pitch-black overcooked soup of eternal despair.
To clarify: today has not been a good day. After spending yesterday rather upset at our dear little furry friend's passing, I woke up this morning not feeling any better. In fact, feeling significantly worse. It was that kind of bleak feeling where it's nearly impossible to move, speak or function at anything more than the most basic level. I cried for no apparent reason on two separate occasions; it helped a little.
Right now? I'm at least functioning somewhat better than I was earlier, but I still feel like my brain is broken (and I have a headache, too, which isn't helping matters). I've had a good day at work — got an article shared by TotalBiscuit, yo — to distract me from the bad things rattling around in my head, but they've still been there lurking on the periphery, waiting to lay me low once again.
I haven't felt this bad for quite some time, and it sucks. It's not entirely due to Lara's passing, either; while that did indeed make me very sad and it still makes me tear up a bit to see Lucy by herself in her cage, as I say that was little more than the stimulus; the additional pressure that caused everything to come gushing out.
It's hard to know how to keep feelings like this under control. For the most part, I'd been feeling reasonably positive recently, but apparently I'd been repressing more emotions than I'd thought. The silly thing — and one that will be familiar to anyone with depressive tendencies — is that with all the confusion and chaos these emotions bring, it's impossible to come to some sort of rational explanation as to what is making you feel so bad. This, of course, makes the answer "what's wrong?" extremely difficult to answer with anything other than a non-committal "I don't know", but it's true; more often than not, when I feel like this, I really don't know what it is that's making me feel so bad.
Today should be a positive day, though, for a couple of reasons: Andie and I went to find out how much the bank would lend us for a mortgage earlier today and it turned out to be more than we were expecting; and I wrote an article that's been pretty widely shared and attracted a ton of potentially new eyes to USgamer, which is great. So I should focus on those positive things and less on the negative, and use the rest of the evening to do things that cheer me up and make me happy. Then hopefully, eventually, the dark edges will fade and I can get back to some semblance of normality again.
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Your last two sentences/statements are exactly right mate. I'm sorry about Lara – my 21 yrs old cat can't last much longer and I know how that is going to make me feel when it happens despite it being expected and inevitable. But I find that it's a battle of wills with the rest – and it's important that you remain in control of your thoughts/focus at times like these. When you are sailing along okay you can relax and let your thoughts take you unexpected places – but I find that in the down times it's important that I don't allow myself to dwell on the invasive negatives. It takes quite a lot of strength and energy, which of course just makes the damn lethargy worse, but the main thought is that in a few days this will lift and I will be fine – because it always does1 it is a physiological function that spins you down and let's the mental guard down. But the wheel that turns the High-Low Cycle continues to turn, and the Bad can't stop the rotation. So it lifts up into the Good again. On the Bad days focus on that inevitable Good that is a few days away. Boss your mind around, give it a lecture, tell it your not interested in all its rubbish, every time you find it interrupting and intruding. It's like when you are dreaming and the dream turns nightmarish – you can recognise that it's a dream and you can change what is happening, or wake yourself up and wait a few minutes before going back into the dream taking thoughts of a different outcome with you to change the dream's direction.
Any Pete, sorry about this long reply – it wasn't going to be. But I thought I'd pass on my own trick for dealing with the recalcitrant 'Blues' aka dark times aka down time aka negativenellies etc. I think the Blues covers it quite well really. Hang in there Mate, you have so much good going for you, happening in your life, and good wishes and positive vibes coming at you from many friends – more than you realise. 😀
I'm truly sorry for your loss, though it sounds a trite thing to say in of itself, it's true.
I've found that giving in to a little bit of the sadness, not all the time, but just putting away thirty minutes a day to be sad, only sad, helps as a release valve for the things you can't comfortably feel in public or perhaps even with loved ones.
That kind of thing helps, IME, because you don't have to completely bottle up the extremes and feel unworthy of your own grief.
No shame in missing a loved one, and Lara being a different species than you doesn't lessen the right to the grief you may have to feel, in order to feel better. I hope you're able to feel even a little better than you have been, because sometimes that's the best you can do in times like these.