Six Months After
Six months after feels like there should be some fort of milestone, but there isn’t. There is no timeline for grief. Even when I feel like I’ve made some progress and I feel better, something knocks me down and I’m right back to the day I lost Ryan. Six months. Wait, hold on, what just happened? I feel like I blinked, and six months of my life passed me by.

Tired
I am so tired. So tired of so many things. Of being unbearably sad everyday. Of having no place to call my home and having very few options to remedy the situation. Of having crippling anxiety that makes it hard for me to make a simple phone call. Of wanting to meet people, to connect, but being completely unable to. Of the bad dreams. Of the anger. Of feeling betrayed. Of being stuck. I feel like I’m being smothered, suffocating. Like there’s no room anywhere for me to exist. Of feeling like I don’t belong anywhere anymore. Of feeling so alone. Of feeling so lonely even when I have people around me. Of being so confused and not understanding. Of trying so hard to claw my way back into the world. Of being the “I’m so sorry, I can’t even imagine” girl. Of feeling like people don’t want to spend time with me because I’m such a downer. Of not being able to move forward in any way. I am so tired of being so tired all the time.

PTSD is a Bitch
I could never have even imagined what it would be like to have PTSD. This is the stuff you read about. People make movies about this stuff. And yet, it’s happening to me. It’s amazing to me that I can even write and share my experiences at all. I still can’t read for any length of time. I can’t remember much of anything about anything. I’ll watch a show and have no idea what I watched the next day. I feel unintelligent. My brain is broken. The smallest of tasks are exhausting. Driving has become challenging and downright dangerous because my mind wanders to far off places completely unannounced. I almost rear ended someone the other day. The flashbacks and the dreams are no joke. I finally found a therapist that I really like and we are starting EMDR next week. Managing my PTSD and finding a way to function better is priority #1. I am hopeful that there is relief coming soon.

I’m Not Brave
I don’t love being called inspirational or brave. I’m not brave. I didn’t choose to have chronic illness that is debilitating or PTSD because of what has happened in my life. Brave is choosing to do something even if it scares you. What I’m doing is attempting to survive what I have been given. None of this is a choice. By saying I’m brave or inspirational, it makes me feel like I am even more separated from others. There’s nothing special about me because of what happened to me. I know that there are no bad intentions in these comments whatsoever, but really, I’m just doing my best to carry on.

All of the Shoulds and the Shouldn’ts
Sometimes, without even knowing it, people judge how others are grieving. Sometimes they do know they are judging and continue doing it anyways. I am here to tell you that there is no right or wrong way to grieve. There are only different ways. Everyone goes through a unique experience of grief and there is no room for judgement. Like, there are negative a million spaces available for judgement. Your current wait time is never times infinity. My grief belongs to me, it is a part of me and will be for the rest of my life. Nothing anyone says or does can ever change that. I do question the things I say. Of course I do. Should I say this. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that, but I won’t censor my experiences based on the expectations of others or societal norms. There are definitely things you are not supposed to say. People tend to not talk about the anger, the sense of betrayal and the fear. And yet, here I am, telling the truth, making it public for anyone to see. Not caring if there is disapproval because you simply cannot know until you know. It’s impossible. I am fulfilling the basic human need to feel seen. If I can help anyone along the way who is traversing an impossible loss and/or trauma, then I am happy.

The Things I Will Not Become
An asshole. I have felt the bitterness sneaking in. I have felt the need to blame others and lash out. I have witnessed others using their grief to abuse other people in a multitude of ways. I am a kind person though and I will not let this change me into something I’m not.
Fearful. Moments of fear are definitely on the agenda for me now. I understand that, but to the best of my ability, I will not let that paralyze me or stop me from following my new path. I will live and I will allow joy to expand as I work through all of this.
A victim. The worst thing I could ever have imagined has happened to me. I am a victim and I am a suicide survivor. Being a victim does not mean that I will use it as an excuse to become smaller, to shrink away. To feel sorry for myself. I am in this 100%. I am here to fight, to love, to grow and to create. I am fierce, even in my grief, even in my trauma, and in my relentless pursuit of becoming who I am in the aftermath.

This blog is a space for me to write about my life, my art and the heartbreak I am experiencing due to the loss of my husband.