Acceptance is so hard.
Someone asked me what grief was like right after I lost Sunflower. That is an excellent question for many reasons. One reason is that grief is complex.
Directly after all of the initial trauma and loss, I kept waiting for my life to get back to "normal". I don't know what exactly I thought "normal" would be, or look like, or feel like. The loss was sudden and unexpected and had taken me by surprise.
It wasn't that life was better before I lost Sunflower. It wasn't that life was worse after I lost her. I felt unprepared to deal with such a devastating blow to my soul. The loss stopped me in my tracks. It seemed to have stopped my world from spinning even though everyone else's world kept going. Everyone kept functioning, nothing shut down for me or my daughter while I dangled mid- movement, waiting.
It was as if I was transcended in time, dangling there, while I watched the traffic of the world zoom by. I remained this way for years. It was like I was living my life in slow motion. My head and my heart weren't connected to my decisions. I watched myself live out a life that I thought was expected of me, while I felt like a zombie, dead and gone.
I passively had two more children. I did what I needed to get through the day. I functioned all the while not really being present. I lived this way for years until very recently I opened my eyes. I realized that I was headed down the path of destruction.
I had been careful all of those years succeeding losing her to not blame her for my life. My life was a mess. The kind of mess that nobody wants to find themselves in and the black hole of destruction kept widening.
The numbing became habitual. It felt normal. But my actions proved that I was still descending that dark path of destruction. No one said anything. No one tried to stop me. I had to save myself.
It took me almost nine years to begin removing myself from the dark spiral threatening to consume me that would eventually take my life. I flung my eyelids open to the harsh reality of what the pain, despair, and numbing had allowed me to miss.
The memories of the past nine years weren't happy. I felt guilty that I had bailed on mothering my boys. I went through the motions like a puppet on a string for them, yes. But was I present at their birth? Do I have the fond memories of my babies' first years of life firmly in place in my mind? I don't.
I tried not to allow the guilt of the last nine years to consume me. I opened my eyes and the pain flooded through me, filling me. The pain has been an undeniable presence in my life for the past seven months straight now. It is a constant and continuous reality. It probably will be for some time.
I began realizing the intensity, the magnitude this loss had had on me. Maybe I did the best I could. Maybe I did all that I could do. Maybe it was enough.
But I'm awake now and I'm ready to live. Even if living means with a continuous, constant pain and a never closing hole in my heart.
