Love Is. It Doesn't Move On.

Four years.

Wow.

No one can tell you how much grief will still hurt years after a devastating loss. There are simply no words to do justice to that depth of pain. It doesn’t matter how much time has passed; the grief (though sometimes less intense) still feels overwhelming. 

After so much time passes, people start to forget. Not that they forget that your mom is dead… but they forget that while to them it may have been four weeks or four months or four years, it still feels like yesterday to you. They can’t understand why it’s so hard to just put your grief behind you and move on.

So then, when you have a moment. A bad day. A mood. You’re also left with the guilt – of being an inconvenience, a bitch, or for bringing everyone around you down. 

Because here is the reality of long-term grief. 

I was just fine. I hadn’t cried in a while. And then, yesterday, a song came up on an old Spotify playlist, and it hit really deep. Like waterfall tears at my desk deep. And now I can’t stop.

It’s kind of like waves; they just come and crash and go sometimes. Sometimes it’s just these tiny little ripples that you choke on for a minute, and then they pass. 

And sometimes, it’s a fucking tidal wave. 

You want to believe that after a certain amount of time passes, the grief will also pass. That you will be able to bottle up all those emotions and put them behind you and move forward with your life. But in reality, the suffering at the heart of it just changes. It might become less acute, less raw, less fiery. You might experience days of happiness, of stability. But really - it stays with you, and every day is a continued effort to heal. 

Because unfortunately, there will be moments that remind you just how stablely unstable you are. And that there is no such thing as normal anymore. There is an unpredictability in grief where the smallest things can bring you to your knees. 

Stability is just an illusion in grief – some days you think you have your shit together, you’ve processed (or numbed) your emotions, you’ve laughed, you’ve had good days – hell, you’ve had great days, and you’ve faced your pain head-on and came out on the other side. 

But then… one small reminder, one stupid day on the calendar, and that illusion comes tumbling down, and you’re left standing in the middle of your closet, crying uncontrollably because you’re late to work, you have nothing to wear, and you just miss your fucking mom so god damn much that it hurts to breathe. 

And that - that was what I experienced this morning.

My mind literally cannot accurately process the fact that it’s been four years since I last saw her alive. Every day, every year that passes, I lose more and more of her. The sound of her voice, the smell of her clothes, her laugh. My memories of her are fading, and despite how badly I want to find her again, I feel like I am chasing shadows - trying like hell to find something that no longer exists. 

I was trying to find a quote to accurately describe these feelings – to sum up what four years of crazy and anxiety and confusion has felt like - and this is the best I could do.

“Every one of us will go through things that destroy our inner compass and pull meaning out from under us. Everyone who does not die young will go through some sort of spiritual crisis, where we have lost our sense of what is right and wrong, possible and impossible, real and not real. Never underestimate how frightening, angering, confusing, and devastating it is to be in that place. - Kerry Egan

For the record, time doesn’t heal all wounds. Time doesn’t lessen the pain. The wounds remain - bloody and raw and hideous. The pain will still knock you to your knees. It’s just that, instead of healing the wounds, the mind covers them with its own version of sanity scar tissue.

I went through something that destroyed me. And I was NOT ok for a while. And some days, I am still not ok. Because underneath all the smiles, and the good days and the witty banter - I feel like I am just a shell of a once very happy girl who would give anything to have her mom back… even for just a day. 

But a million words and prayers and tears won’t bring her back. I know - because I’ve tried.  

The pain is still there; it just lessens. 

But it’s never gone.