I have struggled to write
Stopped myself from coming here.
I have so much I need to say.
So much I need to get out of my brain
That I want you to understand
That I need you to understand.
I want you to understand what I feel
Understand what life is really like
To live with loss.
To have the person you loved the most
Missing from you.
Then I worry you will roll your eyes, read the first few lines, switch off
‘She’s still going on about it’
And I don’t write for clicks or likes or even really views
I write for me, to empty my head, so I can try to make sense of my thoughts
So I can breathe.
I have been stopping myself because I’m still going on about it
My thoughts are against me
On a never-ending loop
I am still talking, writing, moaning about, feeling the same thing
It is exhausting.
So exhausting.
I stop myself from writing because nothing in my thoughts or the way I feel has changed.
I worry I’m not portraying my reality
That I show you a person who has all their shit together
Who is doing so well, dealing with her grief.
You want to hear how well I’m doing
I’m told how brave I am
How I’m getting on with things
That I’m ok.
I am, because I have to
Because there is no alternative.
I am dealing with it, which sometimes means not dealing with it at all.
Some days I do, feel ok.
Those are the moments I share.
Snippets of time I don’t want to forget
I need to hold on to them, show the world that they actually happened.
I look back on recent pictures and try to remember how I felt in the moment.
My thoughts are against me
Grief is against me
I know I enjoy things at the time
My memory is clouded
I only remember how stressed I was, or how I shouted at the kids, how hard I found it all, how I wish it was different.
Do you want to hear that I feel I have lost joy?
That even when I feel joy, guilt follows.
Even I don’t want to hear it.
Every moment of each day I am weighed down by sadness
It is deep-rooted and immovable.
I don’t share the darker moments as I live them
I don’t have the energy to be myself
I’m not even sure what that is anymore.
Do you want to hear that I feel like I am failing, more than I will ever win?
I’m not, I can’t be
I am surviving.
My thoughts are against me
Grief is against me.
It makes me short- tempered and emotional and has stolen happiness from my memories
It makes me believe I am ruining my kids childhoods
That they will only remember me shouting and tense
Because I can’t remember the times I smile and laugh.
My thoughts are against me
Most of the time I feel barely afloat
Just my nose and mouth poking out of the water keeping me alive
Waves hit often, they take me by surprise, out of the blue, unexpected
Suddenly I’m submerged
And I am fucking drowning
Each new wave unearths a new host of feelings I need to process, understand, try to deal with.
It is never- ending.
It is exhausting.
I want to write, writing has always helped me process these feelings
Maybe you won’t want to read how hard this still is
How there isn’t a magic wand
How time is not the great healer
Time is always against us.
Maybe this will help someone, not feel so alone
Because this is such a lonely experience
Am I just rehashing the same thing over and over and over
Maybe I am.
I want to be living our lives to the fullest, making the most of this life we still have
Creating good moments with my two.
I want them to know that it is ok to be happy
To have a good time.
I know that. I know that.
It’s what he would have wanted
It is his legacy.
Grief is more powerful than I could have imagined
These are my thoughts
These are my feelings
This is my reality.
I lost the person I loved the most 6 months ago.
The munchkins daddy died 6 months ago.
He is missing from me
He is missing from us, everyday
We carry this loss, our grief, everyday.
Some days I am not ok
Every day I am trying.
My thoughts are against me.
I will fight them by writing, by getting them out of my head
So I might repeat myself
I may say the same thing twice
I might still be going on about it.
I cannot fear repetition anymore
I need you to understand what it is like.
Bad and good
Repeated, rehashed and new.
They are on a loop, a never-ending merry-go-round of darkness
By sharing it, hopefully I can remember a little light.
This is my reality.
I have so, so many draft posts. Some will never see day, some get rehashed, some I publish as is. If nothing else, in 4 years time you will be able to see it as a measure of how far you’ve come.
I once wrote a post about hats because I rarely ever say everything I truly feel like saying, I put a hat on and pick whether the real me shows at all. It’s how I coped. My smiles posts were my monthly release, now I tend to keep them just for smiles and I write other posts that may one day be read. Sometimes I post them online, sometimes I send them to anonymous sites to be published, but I never stop writing because otherwise it just keeps on going around and around in your head xx
You are doing fabulously, you really are. Be proud of where you are, don’t be embarrassed or ashamed, and dont feel you need to pretend it’s all okay. Your readers know it’ll never all be okay xx
I’m expecting you to ‘go on about it’ for ever, and hope you do, if you want to and feel you can. Nobody is tired of hearing it, we don’t want you to ‘just’ be happy again, we can’t begin to understand although you do such a great job of trying to explain with your words. I’ve always said writing is free therapy…. maybe not free exactly, but definitely a worthwhile therapy of sorts. The children will remember the most important thing, the love. xxx
Hi Becky, the truth hurts and your truth would put the best of us to the test, I know you don’t want to hear time will heal etc, people mean well, but they are just words and just a repeat of what’s been accepted through time, I say keep feeling sad until you don’t feel sad, your children will change that over time, don’t feel guilty that you feel you may be short tempered, who wouldn’t? You lost the man you loved, time is shit, time could mean 1 month or ten years,keep writing, keep feeling, keep being yourself.