So let me start with a confession. I screwed up. Big time. Whoever said there is no right or wrong way to grieve has never actually been on this journey - or at least not taken the same journey that I have. Because I went about it all wrong....
When Kurt died, very early on, I said that taking care of Gavin would take care of me. And I clung to that. Believed it. And threw myself into it full force. I didn't take any time to figure things out for me. Take stalk of my life. Look at what it was that I needed - really needed.
It was John Donne who said that "He who has no time to mourn has no time to mend." How right he was. How right he is. And that is the story of me. Within a span of six weeks I went from a happily married new mom on maternity leave to a full time working widowed single mother. I didn't stop, take time to figure things out. I didn't take time to feel. I surrounded myself with my son's needs, 110%. And as a result, three years later, my son is thriving. While I am not. I can honestly say I have never really grieved. I'm not even sure, at this point in the game, that I know how to.
I can cry, yes. But even that does not seem to be enough. The tears are of sadness, but not really grief. There is no cleansing attached. No emotions, really. They escape from my eyes, and then I wipe them away and keep on doing what I have always been doing. Ignore them. Much like this entire process.
Except while I have been ignoring things on the outside - keeping myself busy enough with everyone else's needs and expectations, the pressure on the inside has not just faded away. Rather, it has grown. And is now at a point where it is starting to break through - leak through - at inopportune times. I can't control it any longer. I can't suppress it. It shows itself in the anger. The impatience. The frustration. It shows itself in the flashbacks. The memories. The sometimes unrelenting thoughts. It shows itself in the anxiety. The depression. The unstoppable feeling that I would rather be dead than living. And yet I feel I can't express it either, for no one would understand the expression that would come three years after the fact. No one would have patience for it three years after the fact. And, frankly, left unattended for three years, I am rather afraid I do not have the capacity to deal with what it has morphed in to.
I so badly want to run away. To shun my current life. To shun the responsibilities and obligations that have served as a distraction for so long. To shun even Gavin. And just run far away, where no one knows me, has no expectations of me. Where I can just be. Just exist. Just be me - whomever that is.
I want to let it all out. Whatever it is. And then pick up the pieces. Whatever may be left.
I know people say you cannot run from your problems, your mistakes. But I honestly don't think I can stay much longer. I screwed up pretty big time with all of this. Even though I was doing what I thought was best, in retrospect I was wrong. And I have got to do something. But honestly, how do I fix the damage?
Or is it already too late?
I'm confessing my biggest secret, right here - right now. Its the simple fact that I really don't know what to do.....
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