So why tonight?
With each minute that passes my mind grows more and more fixated on my need to sleep playing against the back drop of everything real and imagined scenario that causes me anxiety and sadness.
I want these feelings to be over.
I want to feel secure in something again.
I am sick of it being 1:45 am, alone, with no one to prod out of their slumber so I can bear just one simple request: hold me.
How I could've had that at one time and how it could've been so forcefully ripped out of my hands, well, it's just a very cruel feeling. I am left to imagine every unthinkably horrible event that could strike the lives of me and the girls by myself in bed late at night. No one is there to remind me how ridiculous these fears are. The reason: they have proven themselves to not be ridiculous fears but something that could happen and that already has happened to us.
The light coming through the window has a very late autumn quality to it. I imagined for a moment that there was snow falling. Discovering that there wasn't snow was almost a relief, and not because it was going to make driving difficult, or that we might slip on ice, or even because we don't really have the proper foot wear yet.
It is because it would've been so beautiful to see that I almost can't stand the thought of seeing it now. I have gone on for months about how much I've missed the snow. And I do-I certainly do. It's just that the discovery of snow falling in the middle of the night is a much nicer thing when someone is there to wake up to break the news to. Just as nice is having someone shake you out of a slumber to spread the good word. I know this to be true.
Most things of beauty are difficult for me to handle. Any of the good times I have are very fleeting. I feel like I'm having a hard time carrying myself through this ugly phase. I have come to start looking at it as if I am crossing some shallow but freezing body of water by way of hopping onto rocks poking through the surface. The rocks are moments of joy that I have to leap to. Sometimes my aim is off or my jump is to short and I wind up floundering into the water. I will not drown, but I am freezing and uncomfortable when I fall short. I can stand on a rock to catch my breath and appear to be on solid ground, but I'm almost always assessing my freezing feet in their wet shoes. Time is the invisible hand that won't allow me to linger on the rock and we, me and time, just have to keep moving.
I do keep moving though. There is no other way. From one pleasant moment to the next, but the in between part is agonizing. The part where I'm up to my shins in swiftly moving water that is so cold my feet have long since gone numb is what makes up the majority of my days.
This is incredibly unfair to the girls. I put my best face on around them, but cry behind their backs. How can they not know? How can they not sense that their own mother?
Will it always be this way. Will I be standing on a rock in cold, wet feet when either of my girls are graduating from high school or college? What kind of condition will I be in when either of them gets married or has children? Will I truly be able to enjoy any of it or will there always be this nagging emptiness in my heart? Will I never regain my sense of balance again?
This is a very frightening and sobering thought, now, at 2:15 am, with Jack Johnson singing in my imagination that it seems to me that maybe pretty much always means no... I am sick of maybes and time-will-tells. I want the answer now.
3 comments:
I have no answers. But I have been going through grief for my dad in the middle of the night, too, and then a grief for my mom, who has trouble sleeping. I don't know what it is about the middle of the night. It's all just so quiet, there is nothing to distract us from the ugly realities and fears.
When I get sad for my mom, I think of my grandmother who lost her husband in her late 60's. SHe lived to be 89, and I have no doubt that she enjoyed her life to the fullest. She never remarried. She found ways to enjoy each moment with family and friends. I know it must have been so hard on her, especially since she had to watch my grandfather deteroiate from Alzheimers, but she found happiness everywhere she could. SO I know it's possible.
You are so young. You have lifetimes ahead. Keep the faith.
Liz, this is beautiful!!!...I'm crying as I'm typing this!!!...it really hit a nerve, because I had a rough nite last nite...I'm on the verge of a potential break-up on top of everything else that has been happening and a lot of the same questions went thru my head...I'm so sorry that u're hurting!!! (*HUGS*)...I agree w/ free too...keep the faith and I will keep u in my thoughts and prayers...take care!!
****Julie****
that's the thing about answers, nobody has the right one and if they proclaim they even have a thought of an answer,it leads to more questions! i can't understand your loss, that part of me has never had to deal with such an extreme, however i've lost someone who i was supposed to spend the rest of my life with and raise our children together in a much different way.i dare say that my mama was second when it came to my dear brother sam. 15 months apart it was if we were twins from the start. he always took care of me in a way that my parents were incapable.the youngest in our family, it was almost as if my parents were through with raising children and sam and i relyed on each other for our emotional needs. when he died a part of my soul went with him. i litaraly saw it fly right for my very being into the air and far far away. i've never been the same and i don't want to be the same without him. i went though the camit of feelings that all good readers, read about, anger, saddness etc. but i never got as far as acceptance. i mean i truely understand and accept that he's gone but the why????? it's not fair and i weep for all those people that have to deal with the loss of someone at such an untimely young age.if this is any help, i do believe that my brother was meant for better things. was meant to be more effective where he is now and that this earthwalker life was never trulely for him, just meant to touch those people that he had the oppertunity to touch.blessed are we to be able to have the wonderful oppertunity to have been a part of them.now, as far as how to get though all that feeling of loneliness and loss. well, to be quite honest you just don't! sorry no candy coating. we are always going to feel saddness and want to cry. good news is crying is great! it allows us to get it out and not hold it in and implode us. i also look for and find those lil things that put a smile on my face. the leaves blowing on a blustery day. a strong sturdy oak as a whole but also under it's canopy at each indiviual leaf. close you eyes and let the sun warm you face and feel it on even fraction of an inch.these tiny lil details that we always take for granted,that our lost loved ones now wish they had the time to feel it and see it again. try to see it though a childs eye,like it's the first time you ever saw a bumble bee sit upon a big expressive sunflower.and you get to share it with your daughter all for the first time! i know easier said than done, but it's a constant effort. a moment to moment effort that does pay off in the end. the goal is to think of him with a smile on your face and tears of fondness in your eyes, and thoughts of luck and gratitude that we were allowed to take part and be able to know these most amazing people, in our hearts and mind!
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