Sadness and Divorce
The alarm has been blaring for several minutes now. You feel like you can barely raise your arm to it turn off. It feels like so much effort. Everything feels like so much effort. Even though you are so very tired and all you want to do is sleep and forget, you can’t. Some nights you lie awake for hours tossing and turning, finally falling asleep exhausted in the wee hours of the morning. Then you drag yourself around the next day, repeating the process the next night.
sadness is common
Possibly you can’t stop crying. You’re crying in the bathroom stall at work, behind the wheel when you’re driving, while you’re making dinner for the kids, or sitting alone in your empty apartment missing the hubbub of the kids and the dog. You’re a big sloppy mess that you don’t even recognize.
You wonder how long you can go on like this. You’re not eating, or you’re overeating. You’re maybe drinking a little too much. Truth be told, there are moments when you don’t want to go on anymore. It’s too much. You may think about suicide. You may fleetingly ponder a plan and then, possibly, less fleetingly, come back to considering that plan again. If this is your current mindset, please stop reading, and dial 911 or go directly to your local emergency room.
Hopefully the situation is not quite that dire. The sadness is significant but you are mudding through. From time to time you may be wondering how normal this is, if this is the way it is for everyone going through a divorce. The answer would be, yes, at least to some degree.
In the initial weeks and months, sadness is normal. Self-medicating with food or substances - or being unable to consume anything at all, is likewise normal. Now is the time to call that friend who said they would be willing to help you out, no matter what you need. The thing to notice is whether the trajectory is generally upward, even if there are ups and downs day to day.
other aspects to consider
There are a few other things to keep in mind about the sadness, however appropriate it may be for the moment. First, as you may have already noticed, the flip side of the sadness is anger. Swinging back and forth between despair and rage is a common pattern. Each feeling with be deep. With time the emotional swings will likely moderate until they become more predictably episodic, ie. when you see your Ex at Court, when you exchange the children in person, when you attend a family graduation or wedding, etc. So, if you feel like your emotions are swirling and swinging, know that this is often a normal part of the separation and divorce process.
Second, if you are experiencing symptoms of depression for an extended period of time and your daily functioning is impaired, call your primary care physician or local clinic. Make an appointment with a divorce counselor who can listen and support you. Talking to a skilled professional can be helpful in lending stability and keeping a clinical eye on your progress.
There’s no award on the horizon for slogging through the days on your own. And understand that you are potentially placing your physical and mental health, as well as quite possibly your life, at risk by not addressing your sadness head on. You are on your own now. You need to be proactive. Medication and therapy have their place. They can get you over the hump so you can sleep, eat, and function on a daily basis.
Third, if you find yourself seriously pondering suicide, call the National Suicide Hotline at 1-800-273-8255, dial 911 or go to your local emergency room. The sadness does pass. And there is a new life waiting for you around the corner. But you have to stick around to live it.