This week finding the right words has been difficult for me. My Dad passed away and I am feeling all “these things”; frustrated that I cannot put words on all of it.

I’m not dreaming anymore. Not even the nightmares. Not for days. It’s unsettling. Grief, itself, has a unique strangeness. It grabs you and throws you hard against the floor, you are wounded. You are angry…and sad.

You have to eat, and that causes a new kind of grief…you realize you have to continue to do people things like go to work, talk to a neighbor…or answer emails about what seemed like important things before now…but have been rendered pointless by the **after**. You have to wake up and remember all over again because in a slight moment of morning haziness you somehow forgot…you are mad at the sun, and traffic (which isn’t new, really, but you just **can’t** right now with this FUCKING TRAFFIC.) You are angry, again.

You are quiet and brittle. You want to disappear.

You avoid Facebook. You wonder if eyelids can get chapped and can’t remember driving home. Your head hurts, you worry it might never stop. You mull over your life, you chastise yourself for ONLY thinking about yourself. You stay anchored inside your selfish little grief bubble. You laugh at something stupid and guilt washes over you like a sick mess. You are ashamed and so sorry.

You maniac.

You talk to yourself about yourself, because it’s less painful than missing your Dad and feeling fucking useless to anyone. You feel **safer** in the bubble.

You loved your Dad.

It’s a wonder we can survive at all…through life’s particular cruelty…gifting us something which at times seems too lovely to enjoy or too painful to endure.

Though we do endure it, nurture it, fear or embrace it, reclaim it…not right now…but eventually.

image  © Aimee McEwen, if shared please link back to this post