Grief or Medicine?

I haven't posted in a few days for a couple reasons. 1 - my dad is visiting and its often harder to have time to think and reflect when people are here with me. 2 - I've been really busy taking a seminary course and being a part of a virtual conference and 3 - I've felt weirdly numb.

About a month ago, my psychiatrist increased my antidepressant because I was NOT okay. I felt like I was in this pit. My arms felt heavy. My heart felt heavy. I felt hopeless. It was hard to do anything. I kept doing what I needed to do to take care of me and P but I was worrying myself.

But then after a couple weeks of intense grief around G's birthday, the 4 month anniversary of his death and my birthday I suddenly felt - numb. I was worried that I was overmedicated. Instead of crying too much I felt like I was crying too little. It seemed surreal that G was gone and in some ways surreal that he was ever here. At times I wanted to cry but the emotions wouldn't produce tears. And I've been staying busy, busy, busy.

I talked to my psychiatrist today again and cried when he asked me if I was afraid of forgetting G. YES. It feels like its already happening in some ways. New routines are becoming... routine. Time keeps moving forward and every day is one more day without him, one more day since he died. I can write that and feel emotionally unattached at the same time. But then I did cry earlier and my psychiatrist decided that the medication isn't numbing me too much but rather helping me cope.

Mourning and melancholy he kept saying. Terms from Freud. Mourning is normal. Melancholy is what we would call depression. The medicine is helping my melancholy. And numbness is a part of grief. Grief is so weird. I don't want to go back to that worrisome state and yet I want to be more able to cry. I think what I need to do is slow down and THINK and FEEL. I've been numbing myself with busyness. Distracting myself with tasks. Avoiding reality. Getting stuff done but not always the work of grief.

I need to slow down a bit. Time to find a way.