This is grief, getting lost

Yesterday I went to Walmart and when I got to the checkout I could not find my debit card. I could not remember the last time I used it. I had no other way to pay. I had no checkbook, no cash. I usually have at least one, if not both. I had to abandon my items at the checkout because I had no way to pay. Then I got in my car and I drove around the Walmart parking lot for a few minutes in circles and I could not figure out how to get from the parking lot to the road.

I am an adult human being of at least average intelligence. I have been navigating parking lots for 16 years. I have a keen sense of direction. I always know where I am going and exactly how to get there. Except not these days.

I am a person who knows how to navigate. If not life, at least spatially. I can find my way anywhere and I can tell you three ways to get to a given destination. Except not these days. 

It is hard for me to even understand how I spend so much time trying to find my way, turning around, doubling back because I missed my turn, changing course because I am not on the path I thought I was. I am constantly losing my way. Of course I have lost my way in life. But on the road? I have been driving these specific roads in this specific city for 14 years. And yet every day I get turned around, lost, unsure of how to get from where I am to where I am supposed to be.

I did not expect this out of grief. It is surprising and disorienting.

Now that I am writing about this aspect of my grief I am shocked at what a metaphor it is for grief itself.

I'm lost, I'm disoriented, I feel like I'm going in circles. I can sometimes see where I want to go, but I do not know how to get there.

Sometimes I don't want to live, but since I'm still alive there are some things I know I want to do. How do I get to those things? It's so confusing, it doesn't make sense. I'm in the Walmart parking lot and I'm driving in circles and I know where the road is but I can't seem to find the path to the road.

Besides being disorienting, this is maddening. I'm so frustrated that I can't do simple things. That I can't see where I'm going. Both in the Walmart parking lot and in life.