This week, I was sick again for the fourth time in five months. Believe me, I take every vitamin /supplement / herb you can think of for immunity but alas, they’re just no match for grief.

It’s a tremendous amount of work — surviving suicide — it depletes massive amounts of energy and requires unmitigated fortitude. I sat at my desk in denial about how sick I was until I couldn’t physically get up on my own. I had to call for help, and thankfully I had family nearby to aide. Tears escaped once they got there: “I don’t want to be sick,” I pleaded as my tears and tremors greeted them.

I spent the next day at home lying on my couch, alternatively sobbing and attempting to breathe. What a mess, what a mess all this is.

I had to go back the following day [24 hours on antibiotics] because, of course, I really don’t have anymore time off… because I keep getting sick. Thus the cycle repeats, and I’m trapped. Can’t stay healthy enough to earn time off, so I go back to work before being fully recovered, and then I get sick again.

And then I feel like I’m never at work.

And then I feel bad at my job.

Oh, and, let’s not forget, I don’t have energy to answer my phone.

And then I feel like a bad friend. A bad sister. A bad aunt. I didn’t call one of my nieces on her birthday…I’m not sure if I’ve ever missed a birthday, but there’s a good chance I’ve missed a few of them this year.

It’s exhausting, all this surviving. And there’s a million expectations, whether people admit it or not. One’s job expects the same performance, one’s friendships expect the same friend. One’s home requires the same maintenance.

And I just can’t keep up.

I’d like to isolate for a while: turn my phone off, leave my job for a bit, hide under a blanket, maybe even build a blanket fort with my husband to camp out under for a couple weeks, but it’s just not possible.

So I’ll carry on, more dead than alive, because I have to. “I don’t know how you’re doing it,” people often say, and I generally shrug and say the same thing: “It’s because I have to. There’s not another option.”

Yes, there are things that ease suffering and help to manage stress, but none of them diminish the physiological response of my exhausted mind and body.

There was a point in my first few months of grief when I felt like I’d never sleep again, but I sleep normally most days of the week; there will be a time when I’m not so frequently ill and exhausted, but now there’s no end in sight.

Oh, and I miss my Mom every second of every day. A lot. I mean I really, really, really miss her.

It’s hard to feel like you’re always failing, even if there’s a good reason for it.