Finding My Way Back

I’m here.

I realize I haven’t posted in several months.  Every few weeks I start a post and then it falls to the wayside.  I’ve had every intention of “staying on it.”  But for awhile there staying on it = additional stress and fatigue.  Guess what?  It’s not worth it.

A childhood best friend passed away at the end of February.  It wasn’t a complete shock, meaning I had known about her diagnosis/prognosis for several months.  As much as one might think you can prepare yourself for such a moment, well, you can’t.  Her passing knocked me down, hard, and on so many levels.  She has two young babes around the same age as mine and for days I couldn’t even look at my own children without crying.  I felt pain for so many reasons and so many different people.  I thought about her laugh and the fact that none of us would ever get to hear it again (seriously, no one has a laugh like Janice, and I mean that in the best possible way).  There were so many reasons to be sad.

I’ve experienced grief before, but in a kind of way where I didn’t fully allow myself to be completely immersed in it.  I would dip a toe and then quickly pull back.  It’s not a difficult thing to run from.  It’s hard to embrace.

This time I didn’t even have a choice.  It held me down and kept me in its grip and there was nothing I could do to tear myself away.  I’m thankful, now, that this was the case, even though in the moment it was huge and overwhelming and oh-so-exhausting (did I mention Vinny was working in L.A. while all this went down?  A true test of grit if there ever was one). 

Since Janice passed, there have been so many things to write about.  So.  Many.  Things.  Writing is always my go-to escape, my way of making sense of my world.  And by extension, sharing my ramblings helps to keep things real, grounded.

So after several weeks I began to feel guilty and depressed that I wasn’t writing, keeping up with the blog, just generally pouring my thoughts/experiences/feelings out onto the page.  Even if it was just for my own eyes to read later. 

I tried to push myself to write, dammit!  You know how to do this.  You must do this.  It’s what you do. 

But there were no words.  Only tears.  Only sadness.  Only that empty feeling you have when someone is missing and you forgot what a big part of your life they were until they are gone. 

And so I sat with all that.  I meditated.  I cried.  I stretched.  I cried.  I doodled.  I cried.  Then I cried some more.  I stopped thinking about whatever it was I was supposed to be doing.  If I never wrote another blog post again, fine.  If I never explained what happened to me the last few months, fine.

Mostly, I’m not doing either of those things right now, even though it kinda looks like I am.  My experience of grief, what it felt like and continues to mean to me, is still too close to share in intimate detail.  My body is still so raw, though now I can walk past a blooming plant and smile with pleasure instead of dissolving into tears, or listen to some of my favorite (albeit sad) songs without immediately turning into a snotty mess. 

It doesn’t mean the grief is gone.  It’s merely giving me breaks now… escaping my body in more measured (and manageable) bits.  I still have moments that overtake me so sharply I can barely breathe, as though I need a reminder that yes, she is still gone, lest I forget.  Like I could.

So I am slowly finding my way back.  In fact, I have been more slowly everything lately.  Savoring moments with the kids, especially the tedious ones, the ones we tend to overlook because taking care of kids can so often feel like a monotonous routine.  I have never been more grateful to participate in a monotonous child-care routine.  More grateful to be healthy and mobile and aware and able to live my life.  More grateful to be awake.  To everything.