Get some counselling. Not from your doctor, but from a real grief counselor, a psychologist or whatever.

Ambien is for short-term sleep problems and what you have sounds more like moderate depression headed for major depression ... stress-induced depression is well known to therapists.

SueRose,
One thing that has helped me to cope is to walk or get exercise. It has been 17 months since my son died. I started walking to relieve stress and also because I couldn't sleep at night and I did not want to take medication.
I hope you are able to find a counselor to help you.
And please keep coming back here and you will find like I did that you are not alone.
Virginia

Counseling is a good route to take. Just as writing it out helped, just being able to talk to someone (who you don't/won't feel like you are "burdening" with your problems) will also feel good, and be therapeutic. One of the things that is recommended to get past grief is to talk about it and to tell the story. Not only that, if you get a good counselor (or therapist) he/she may help you to compartmentalize things so you're not having to take it all in at once so that you end up feeling overwhelmed and unable to cope. My heart goes out to you because you have so much on your plate. I hope you are able to find some relief.

I'm so sorry for all that you are having to deal with. Sometimes it seems that when it rains, it pours. I think that we all go through times like this in our lives. I hope that in these last couple of weeks, you are feeling better and getting some help.
Lu

I disagree about counseling. Empty words. I think the poster in question would be considered psychotic and homicidal if she felt great about all the death surrounding her life. Death sucks. It should make us angry. I think it was Robert Frost that called it nature's last laugh on me.

What the poster needs is a break from death and to find her own way of turning her anger out instead of inward. The shabby, cheap, and hollow rehearsed words of counseling, more often than not, demean and deny the horror of witnessing the suffering and the futility of death and the vast emptiness it leaves behind.

Or she could become a drug addict. Uppers and downers ... either way blood flows.

A long, long time ago Bill Cosby had this comedy skit about going to the dentist and getting Novacaine. He claimed that Novacaine didn't kill the pain...it just postponed it.

You cannot avoid the pain, you can postpone it, but the hurt won't leave until you really hurt bad. Lousy isn't it?

Our poster needs to find something engrossing for her to do. Who cares if it impresses the rest of us or not? Maybe its collecting broken pieces of glass for a mural, bits of string for the largest ball of twine, becoming a Vetrinarian, or playing computer games really well. Whatever it is, our poster needs to control a bit of her world in an uncontrollable world.

marf

As harsh as Marf's words seemed to me when I first read them, there is a certain ring of truth to them.

I did 6 months of grief counseling after my son died and got little value from it. That's not to say there is no merit in counseling, just not for me at that time.

Looking back, I think grief is an individual process that has to play itself out the best way it can. I tried everything--reading, talking, writing, praying, walking, meditating. What helped? All of it and none of it. Time, I guess. And, like Marf said, activity and diversion.

Over time I find the horrendous, raw emotional moments are outweighed by a gentle sadness that lives in the core of my soul. Up and down, round and round, one foot in front of the other.

Give it time SueRose, it won't always be this bad.

marf- sorry counseling isnt your cup of tea, it isnt mine either.
I am so sorry for all of your loses. you are in deep grief, it sucks. the things I have tried- talking to my pastor- i dont know, I think talking to my friends helped better. walking, or bike riding helps me temporarily, throwing myself into gardening or straighning up the house, or well i will say it- drinking has helped me too, i wont say drink, and i wont say getting drunk, i once did that, and it was awful and made things worse. i am not very useful yet regarding the loss of people. i am sorry. (())

I think lots of us sort of shut down when the burdens become overwhelming.
Shutting down leads to more shutting down, a downward spiral, until we're just numb & we can't function well at all.

Get your blood oxygenated:
dance, jog, bicycle, chop wood, until your pulse pounds.

That makes your synapses fire more precisely, which makes your brain work more efficiently, which makes you more able to cope, to get on top of the problem rather than having the problem on top of you.

MarthaPartha, you ring a note that sounds oh so true. Thanks and bring this to the forefront. It needs to be done this way.