Hello KT,
You are not alone. I don't think anyone is ever prepared for grief. It isn't something anyone ever talks about or helps prepare you for, which makes it even harder to deal with. You end up going into it entirely unprepared. Then you feel isolated, because no one can really understand how you feel about having lost someone so close unless and until they experience it for themselves, and then grief itself changes you, changes your world and changes your future and you have no idea how to adjust to all that, which leaves you in emotional turmoil and finding it hard to cope with everyday life and as well as that, you know this is permanent and getting used to this new unwanted 'normal' - and all that that entails - is the hardest most painful thing ever.
You say all this only happened in May, so I'm afraid you have a long way to go to get anywhere near finding your feet again and can't expect that to happen any time soon. You just have to take it one day at a time, and some days are better than others and you just have to go with it. There are no rules to grief, nor set time-scales. It has taken me all this time to begin to feel better at all and I still don't feel I'm there yet, but it is getting better. It will for you too, but don't expect to ever be the person you were before it happened. I don't think you are ever the same person again as you used to be. How can you be? Your life will never be the same, so how can you expect to be? So you have a new you to try to understand and get to know too.
I think guilt is a common feeling. I also experienced this. I experienced this too after I lost my dad and tried hard to make sure I did everything I could for my mum in the years after that. I didn't want to feel guilty again, but I did. I spent the last six weeks of her life trying to find a way to get her home, but failed and she died in hospital. I had promised her I would get her home somehow, but I know now she was just too ill, but it broke my heart that I couldn't do it and it will always hurt me that the last weeks of her life were so awful. So the guilt was there again anyway. Lots of people mention feeling guilt, but realistically, we all just do our best at the time, but however hard we tried, we will always feel it wasn't enough and we let them down in some way. It isn't really true, but it is how we feel.
I didn't have any anger to speak of, but I suspect yours may stem from having lost her at such a young age, so you may be feeling robbed of the years you feel you should have still had ahead of you to share with her. I think that is perfectly understandable, but life isn't fair and things people don't deserve do happen to them.
I did and do have the irritability. That has not gone away and I don't think it will now. I think it has to do with grief altering your perspective on life. You can suddenly see how people make an issue of what are actually really trivial things. Your priorities change as a result of loss, so that you feel impatient with the people around you who do stress over things that you now recognise are things that really don't matter in light of the things you have been through. As a result, you move your life forward in line with your altered perspective and after a while, I began to feel more at ease with that and feel quite comfortable with it now and just feel sorry for those who can't see it and irritated when it impacts on my life. I don't expect that ever to change now.
As for the weight lifting, that has taken a long time and if I am honest, I think, although it has lifted a little, in part I think it is also that I have just got used to it. Adjusting to this new life is a long and on-going process and we all just have to work our way through that and manage the process as best we can.
This site is a help, as we can all share our experiences and knowing that others have experienced similar feelings helps us feel less isolated and it takes away some of the worry and anxiety we go through when we are trying to deal with it alone. So keep talking to us here KT, it will help and we are here for as long as you need us.