This grieving thing is way harder than I imagined it would be. It is harder than other people portrayed it to be. I have had other deaths before, grandmothers, aunts, cousins but I have never experienced grief in this manner. I have never felt the grief that comes with the loss of a parent. When I thought it would happen was another 15-20 years from now. Time enough that I could say that she enjoyed her life and got to have a long life. Instead, she was gone before she could even get to old age. There were things I needed her to know but I wasnt ready or prepared to tell her those things. As I have gotten older, I have gotten better at the I love yous but there was so much more that she needed to know and understand. She never got the chance to say goodbye and while we were there when she took her last breath, I feel cheated in not getting a chance to say goodbye as well. She wasnt there by the time we got to see her. The only thing keeping her alive were the machines, breathing for her to keep her heart pumping the toxic blood through her veins. And admittedly, I am just not happy with how she left us. the timing, the cause, the lack of the hospital being accommodating to allow us to get her anxiety down when this could have been a life or death situation. 

But knowing all of that, I am still left with trying to handle where we are now. And I just cannot do so. It is a separate hurt to have to utter words about her in the past tense. Most of the time I avoid it if I can. When I do use past tense, i do it for other people. To shield them from the fact that I dont accept the past tense when it comes to her. Shortly after last seeing her, I decided that my mental state had already been fragile in trying to deal with this and I was going to need some assistance. During a pandemic, I just didnt know how that would work. I was already uncomfortable with the thought of being around other people and exposing myself. it has always been an issue to verbally express feelings to a stranger. it didnt matter that I sought them out for that reason. So I knew that my job offered services like this. The service they offered presented me with options for online therapy. it gave me the ability to choose chats, phone calls and video. This was perfect for me because I do much better when I can write it down versus speaking it. I have been attending these sessions sporadically since March. There are things that i have made off limits. It is a boundary that I needed in place in order to not feel the added pressure. The more that I do the sessions the more painful it was becoming. So i purposely took a small break. I tried to shut off my inside voices and avoided the outside voices as well. Was I always successful at it? No. But I needed to be able to remain functional in the world and that was the best solution I could for what felt like a very immediate and urgent need. They were screaming for attention that I could not give.

I went back to counseling. it probably wasnt the best day to go back. The weekend had already been bad and that carried over into the next day as well. I wasnt sleeping well to start and had already been up for over 36 hrs. I had a question about the things that I had placed off limits. I needed to know that because I had such emotions about that as it related to her if getting through grief was possible without resolving those really big emotions as how they relate to her. The answer I really felt was a no. You can get by but would you ever move past it without resolving that? And that is basically what she told me. She said that depending on how big the emotins were and how much I felt comfortable with what grief looked like without addressing that were the determining factors. If it was big enough and couldnt be overcome, then the grief would be managable but not resolved. I had to determine if that would be enough. She has no idea what the emption is but I do and for me it is big. At that moment I couldnt breath. She kept reminding me to breath slowly and remain present. That was all hard to do but now I was unfocused. I could no longer see a viable path to an end and it was all too much. It took nearly 20 mins to compose myself to a semi-functioning and coherent person. And since that time I have remained in that semi-functiong coherent state. I exist in the world because I must at this point. I dont want to talk to anyone but I have to work. I only got about 4 hrs of sleep last night and my brain is mush. I am physically drained from lack of sleep. I am emotionally drained by life. 

As with most things what i want and what I seem capable of never match. I want to be a mentally healthy person. It just doesnt seem like that is possible. Everything feels so....big and heavy. Some days the act of having to open my eyes and welcome another day of that mental weight is enough to make me want to close them again. Writing is not helping. I have become so inconsistent about too. Talking aobut it seems hard. It is hard to utter those words. It feels like a poor excuse for attention. Thinking about it just makes me upset with myself because the thoughts or voices in my head only can repeat the negative things. it just feels like no one understands and I am doing this alone most days. I keep trying to be strong. Everyone is battling something and my something is no worse than their something. When you have a whole family that is grieving, who do you get to talk to aobut your grief without it becoming their grief?

Even now I am sensoring myself. Why is that? This is only for me. I expect no outside judgement and any judgement i place on myself was there long before this. So why cant I just allow myself to say what I want and feel whatever it is i feel? This is why I feel like I will always be grieving.