16.11.2023

It’s been a while… there’s a few entries along the way that we’re too ugly to post for all to see.  Looking back to six months ago it’s amazing how much I’ve changed, but at the same time am still the same.  Something broke in me yesterday… this is my attempt at dealing with it in a healthy way instead of giving into urges… maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t… but it’s a step.

I would have told you that before yesterday I hadn’t cried since my mom died.  I realized that is a lie.  It’s like I blocked out the first year… her first birthday, the first Christmas… l blocked out my first birthday, being on the other side of the province at a hockey arena and Facebook memories hitting me like a ton of bricks standing outside the dressing room.  The endless tears that fell my first Mother’s Day without her, wishing that there was a gravestone, a bench, anywhere I could go to let me feel close to her… I blocked it all out.

She always made fun of me… told me I had too much of my dad in me.  I was definitely soft.  My daughter and her would poke fun of me when movies like Toy Story 3 would have tears streaming down my face.  But from what I can tell, as soon as I faced all those firsts I stopped feeling.

If you look at my google search history you’d probably have a lot of questions or  a lot of opinions of me.  Among them you’ll find the search numerous times in the last few months “why can’t I cry”.  For whatever reason some days I thought if I could feel something I could begin to process it.

I can speculate as to what finally made me break yesterday, but the truth is I knew it was building, it’s been just under the surface for a couple weeks now.  I sat in the bottom of my shower for hours, it wasn’t the graceful quiet cry, it was that ugly I can’t even breathe cry.

I don’t know why I thought this would be better.  I realize now it was my body protecting itself.  There is such a giant ache in my chest and the obstacles in front of me look insurmountable.

When I woke up this morning I decided I wasn’t getting out of bed today.  I let myself wallow in my darkness for a couple hours before I decided to give myself small tasks.  I managed to go get in the shower, then I sat in my sadness for a few more hours.  I managed to bring A to VB camp and bring some supper to my dad.  That earned me a few more hours in the dark.

I wish I could go backwards.  I wish I could put it all back in a box.  Rewind the clock a couple weeks to when things were better.  Instead I’m sitting in the dark, engulfed in sadness, trying to resist urges to do the things they make things better.

Instead Im letting strangers read my struggles… trying to sort through my feelings, trying to tread water.

I made it through day one… one foot in front of the other.