If you want me to breathe into this wreckage…

Day 12 — #writeingrief

If you want me to breathe into this wreckage, brace yourself. Batten down the hatches of your world. Nail your feet to the ground. Build a wall of the heaviest stone. Dig a shelter underground. Hunker down and grit your teeth. Bind yourself with steel straps to the earth. Get ready for the force of my grief.

If I try to tread softly into this pain, I immediately lose my way and am thrown against the battered walls that barely contain me inside of myself. I fortify myself with wine and a grief-cutting sword made of words and try to slice my way through this thick and unrelenting force. I make gashes in the spaces between me and the non-grieving, trying to find my way out of this mess.

I don’t want to suck you into this dark place even though I’d rather have another warm body in here. I know you can’t take it with all of the things going on in your own life and head. I know it would crush you, crush me and crush everything we have between us. So I let you roll over in our bed, onto your side, with your back to me as I sob and storm inside without moving, without making a sound.

The simplest things take my breath away, sucking the oxygen from my lungs and bringing me to my knees. Brushing my teeth, pulling something from a drawer, pulling on a sock, cutting into a piece of meat on a plate. Every movement and moment is a harsh reminder of the ripped out parts of my heart because this grief is unrelenting and unforgiving.

Let me put on armor, carry a protective shield, pick up my sword of words again and begin another fight. I’m not ready to go into this place quietly or softly. I am a warrior in my grief. I became a warrior while he lay dying, and now I don’t know any other way.