Well, I made it through January and I’m into the second year of grieving the loss of my son. Granted, it was by the skin of my teeth, but the important thing is I made it.
On the heels of my first Thanksgiving and Christmas since Christopher died, and his burial at sea on Christmas Eve, I also survived last month; (what would have been) his 19th birthday and also the first anniversary of his death.
I received so many kind wishes on Twitter (of all places), and really need to answer the individual messages. Please bear with me, I will get to them. Even though it’s now the first week of February, my brain still hasn’t caught up with the calendar and I kind of feel like I’m free falling.
It’s been an interesting few weeks, though. Not grand, but not all together awful either. Dare I say, they’ve been a bit…healing? I’d suppressed more thoughts, feelings, and emotions over the past year about losing Christopher than I realized, and they all came at me like a tidal wave recently. It was necessary though. I needed to get there eventually.
I’ve spent a lot of time talking to my psych doctors in the last month (yay, I have two now. sigh) to sort out where I go from here. You see, I spent a fair amount of the first year of Christopher’s absence being very quiet and still mentally, and sometimes physically, because I was in denial that he is really gone. Part of me thought if I sat quietly enough and just waited, he would come back to me (grief makes no sense).
Obviously, that didn’t happen. But what it did do was leave too much space for life to just happen to me. Life happened at me. I was too passive because I was busy conserving my energy for Christopher’s eventual return (grief is a mind fuck) and kept everything else at bay. I was also too afraid to advocate for myself for fear even more would be taken from me (I’m serious, it’s a real mind fuck). Boundaries were crossed, needs were unmet, because I was unable to speak up or speak out.
Year two of my life without Christopher won’t be that way. I’m quietly, little by little, getting stronger so I can advocate for myself better. Both inwardly, to shut down the thoughts that tell me I’ll never smile and mean it again, and outwardly, to not smile when I don’t mean it.
I’m still so very broken, but I’m learning to exist within it instead of fighting against it because that’s exhausting and doesn’t get me anywhere. That’s not to say I’m not legit exhausted anyway. Between the side effects of the medication cocktail I’m on, the constant weight of missing my son, nightmares that arrive like clockwork, and still feeling like a raw, exposed nerve, it’s not possible for me to ever sleep enough. So actively pushing back against grief instead of just rolling with it is a senseless extra activity I just don’t need.
Anyway, I have a lot to talk about and I want to write about a few interesting things that have happened recently. Other things will stay between my grief counselor and me for now, and still others haven’t even been said aloud yet. All in good time.
My life may have changed in one night but it’s not going to get better in one more. I’m in it for the long haul.