Distractions are a nasty thing

It’s been almost four months since Gabriel died. Tomorrow will mark another month that I don’t have my son. Another month that I don’t get to take care of my infant boy, to tell him of the life that Mrs. Spit and I have planned for him, to play with him, feed him, change him. Another month that I am a father in mourning the loss of the future life that I was eagerly anticipating.

Some days I feel like I’m doing a good job of re-integrating with life. I keep moving forward and I feel like I am contributing to my home life and to my work life in a positive, “normal” fashion. Then there are the days when I look at the clock and wonder what on earth I just spent hours doing. Days when a work task that should take an hour takes three, and I can’t put a finger on why.

Before Gabriel, I would have times when I could get distracted. There were times when I could go on a mental journey sparked by some stimulus, be it seeing something, hearing something, or remembering something. Not always, but enough. After Gabriel, I find myself much more challenged to focus, to concentrate, or to remember. I make mental notes, and lose the paper I wrote them on. I start a task, and then find some innocuous thing has pulled my attention elsewhere.

Today at work, I was sitting in my office at the end of a task. I was thinking about what I should do next when the sounds of construction pushed themselves into my consciousness and distracted me. It’s frustrating when you are supposed to move into a new office space, and then you have to listen to the sounds of contractors banging away – finishing the building’s exterior and interior finish.

I feel the same way sometimes. I look like the same person on the outside, but on the inside there is a group of contractors from Renovations by Grief banging away. Some days they’re doing quiet work, and I can forget that they are there. Other days they’re busting up walls and messing with the plumbing, and I can’t think of anything other than the renovations. The structural renovations hurt the most, as I feel my foundation shaking. I’m told that, when they are done their work, the contractors will have made me a stronger person for having undergone their presence. The problem is, I was happy with the person that I was before they showed up. I didn't want to change who I am. But now that they've gone and screwed up who I was, there is no way that I can go back.

I just wish that all of the contractors in my life right now would finish their damned banging, pounding, and renovating and let me be me. It’s so bloody frustrating to be so damned distracted all the flaming time!