I have been reading this forum for about a week and finally decided to write. I just don't know what. It's been almost three months for me now.

I lost my wife while on vacation. We were married for a year and a half although we were with each other for eight years. I wasn't in the bedroom where I had left her after trying to wake her up. She always slept in more than I did. I was told at the hospital that there were food particles in her throat and that she had choked.

It was sudden, in a different city. I screamed so much that I had a hoarse voice for over a month afterwards. We made it back to our hometown (not where we live) for her funeral and I came back home a couple o days later.

I came home to an empty house. My cousin stayed with me a week but his company irritated me after some time because I felt she was there and I needed to be alone with her be as particular with the chores and stuff around the house as she was.

For the next month all I did was chores while hitting the bottom of every bottle I could get to until I wept myself to sleep. It was a little over a month later that I realized that I was getting much worse, the weeping and sadness was taking over a lot more when I was drunk. I was crying the whole day. A few friends insisted that I had to stop drinking (We do not have many friends in the city we live in). They insisted that I would destroy myself if I kept going. The alcoholism had also set in.

I waited a few days and finally went back to work. I've been sober since. I know the booze just adds to my sadness but then It is so hard. Some friends visit sometimes and when they leave, the guilt of just talking to someone else or sharing an old story or a laugh takes over.

I have tried to distract myself. Went and bought a guitar that I wanted for years to keep busy when Im home alone. It helps some days like most everything like a book ; all of them for some time.

Reading this forum had helped. I see similarities in this mix of feelings all of us feel. I also have learnt that talking to others when I have my mood swings (as I call them) ruins the mood for them. I'd like to add here, that the shock of the incident put my Dad in the hospital for a couple of days and I think I need to be strong (or pretend to be) when I'm over at my parents' place.

I have so much in the world but I'm the poorest. I am from India and I have to take care of my parents as they near old age as I have no siblings. My wife and I were both 36 at the time.