Until the moment breaks…

Day 25 — #writeingrief

I’ve avoided writing my grief for days now. At the 20 day mark, I was spent, wasted, and too deep down in it that I was worried I wouldn’t get out. I felt like I was losing any possibility of brighter moments of life eked out between relentless waves of grief. My world was a dark sea, and I was at the bottom looking up at splintered light.

Even now, I’m not even floating on the surface of my grief. I’m still beneath it, suffocating, lungs wrapped around my heart, useless. I struggle for a breath that would actually fill me, buoy me up and away from these depths. When I allow myself a moment to pause and reflect — so rare right now because I’m not sure I want to know what is inside of me— I realize that I’m shallow-breathing. I force myself to reach more deeply into the pit of my chest and force air into it. I exhale slowly, feel the rush of blood in my head.

Those I know are above the surface, on a boat of normalcy, bobbing gently, their images rippling from the waters between us. I can make out smiles, the gestures of small talk, mundane motions, halos of light around them. I look up at them from the waters. I reach up, I scream, but they don’t hear me above their roars of conversations, peals of laughter, tinkling of ice in full glasses. They are having a party. They are living life without me.

When I stopped writing and reading this course for a few days, I waited for a break in the heavy waves that crashed through me. I waited for the forces to stop pulling me into the abyss. I was waiting for a break in the storm, a moment of quiet and peace. I was in a roiling ocean with no hands to pull me out of it, no oasis.

I am a blur of limbs, pale, weak, sinking. I wait for a break in this vast, never-ending sorrow so I can catch my breath.