How life kicked my ... down... Part 3
- Lubka Weisenpacherova
- Feb 14
- 5 min read
May 15th’24 8am
It would be my mom’s birthday… I’m drinking coffee out of the special coffee cup. It’s thin and small and white with a golden rim. It’s one of the set we used to have home behind glass - only for special occasions… We weren’t allowed to touch them. They were pulled out only for special occasions, like when my godparents came to visit. On those rare occasions my mom and my godmother drunk coffee out of these... I drunk my first coffee from one of these. I felt so grown up. I was 14 or 15…
I’m drinking my coffee out of one of these cups… thinking of my mom today… Miss you mama…
xxxxxxxxx
How did you sleep? If anything like me, I’m proud of you for getting up today! I slept maybe 3 hours.
How are your TO DO and TA DA lists working out for you?
How is the morning exercise? Can we add on?
I like my full morning routine to be something like this:
wake up
brush my teeth and ski care
prep big cup of warm water and another big cup with warm water with chia seeds and freshly squeezed lemon juice
work out and drink the cups. This usually takes me about 30 minutes
make another big cup with light green or white tea and coffee (black, no sugar)
10 minutes meditation wit the tea (I use an app)
10 minutes journaling and planning the day ahead while drinking my coffee
It gives me the quiet time I need to function all day. The only days I don’t follow my routine are when I’m mountaineering. Simply because usually I wake up at 2am those days…
xxxxxxx
Note for everybody who is lucky enough never to experience:
loosing somebody you love deeply
loosing your closest friends and family
loosing all your savings, house etc...
surviving any kind of catastrophe…
all above or variations all at once…
I’m happy for you. Please, don’t tell your grieving and/or depressed friends to cheer up or to get over it! We simply can’t.
Depression is not a simple sadness… It feels like everything is covered with grey dust. All you feel is numbness. There is no real joy or happiness. There is no light at the end of the tunnel.
And, if you mix depression with panic attacks… It’s just LIVING HELL!!!
Instead, sit down with us and let us talk (or not). Don’t force us to talk, just let us set the pace… We are not monsters. We are mostly scared and sad beyond anything you can imagine. We are just trying to figure out what we are feeling and why.
Check on us once in a while. Most of us won’t reach out… We are too scared. We don't want to bother you.
One more DON’T:
Don’t try to get them drunk. It might help in that moment… But alcohol will just intensify the panic attacks. Trust me on this one… I’m speaking from my own experience. And, if you feel shitty when hangover, imagine how it feels when you feel completely useless, broken and wishing you were dead all that before your first drink…
Beside that, we are more likely to look for drinks to drawn our depressions and it may lead to addiction.
xxxxx
Hey you…
I can see you feel down and it seems impossible to get out of your bed and take a shower, and washing your hair feels as impossible as climbing Everest (highest mountain on Earth). Mountaineers would disagree with that comparison.
I hear you and I wish I could be there for you, either to help, to talk or just to sit quietly with you. Take my hand and let’s do it together… Take a few deep breaths and…
You are great!!!
xxxxxxx
Extra notes… You might find yourself here..
I’m an overachiever… I've alway been… and my parents just supported that. I’d learnt as a little child that love is a reward for succeeding… or what was success at the time.
I was tamed to be the good girl. To be “kennst du eine, kennst du alle” type R used to tell me I’m (or wished I was)… The easiest translation would be: “you know one woman, you know them all.” He never knew, I wished sooooooo many times in my life to be “kennst du eine, kennst du alle…”
… I am not… I’m an overachiever… at everything… I am an overthinker and overfeeler as well… and I overlove… That’s why I cannot let go… O don't know how to let go... I don’t want to let go…
xxxxxxx
Wayne, my best friend, mentor and sort of my father figure. My own father passed away 13 years ago and I hadn’t spoken to him at least 10 years prior…. I will always regret that…
Back to Wayne… He was there when my father passed away. He was there when my mom passed away. He was my ski coach and mentor and… my best friend…
He saw me laugh and he saw me cry… He saw me struggle and he saw me succeed. The one thing he never saw, was me falling in love… I knew him since 2007 when I moved to Whistler, Canada. After I left Whistler he made me call at least every other week for a chat (Thank you, Wayne, I’ll be eternally grateful for making me do that.)
I will never forget the call from Michaela and the email from Esta… I was just on the train to spend a week holiday with my brother and his family back home in High Tatras. I was excited to talk to Wayne that evening… I wanted to tell him I met the man of my dreams… and that I was falling in love… It was March 13th 2023…
I remember sitting on the train first reading the email from Esta: the shock, not understanding, confusion… First thing I thought, it must be a typo… (Esta has NEVER typos in anything she writes.)
I don’t remember how long I sat there… at some point, Michaela called again… As we never talked on the phone, it was a surprise.
She said those horrible words…Wayne id dead... and then, there was a long silence.
If you ever lost anybody, you know there is nothing to say… maybe after a while… but not right away… there is just the horrible shock and silence…
I called R that evening and told him what happened… and he was everything I needed… "I'm here for you when you need me..."
xxxxx
Grief is a weird feeling… I read somewhere: “The greater the love the greater the grief.” And that we don’t grieve only for the dead…
Dear R.
I'll grieve for what we had for the rest of my life...
Love you... Always..
xxxx
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