There are times when I think about my mom and I can’t feel anything. Usually in those moments I think that I’m just doing really well and have just gotten too used to the ever-present feelings of grief to feel anything anymore. and yay, i don’t feel miserable!
Alas, this is never the case . . . instead it more often than not foretells a mama freakout. And this one has indeed. I started feeling it week before last, the numbness, and now today we have full-blown mama FREAKOUT. A good thing happened in my life this week and when good things happen there’s no one else I really want to tell. And then the reality of that loss bears down on me all over again. And then I feel a little nervous about a new activity I’m starting in my life, and she would be the one who would know exactly what to say to me. This didn’t really hit me until I told my sister and she said how proud mom would be and how happy she would be.
I’m so tired of feeling complicated. I’m so tired of feeling, in general. I’m tired of feeling that I have so many feelings that I have to make room for and cope with. Grief, in all its myriad and unexpected forms, is fucking exhausting. I feel these days that it isn’t just one family member I’m mourning, and have been mourning, but an entire family - our entire dynamic (which wasn’t ever a super easy one, but was joyful nonetheless).
I live in Europe, so I don’t see my family very often anymore, whereas when my mom was alive, and immediately after her death, I saw them at least once a month. After moving with my husband to Paris, I’ve been able to distance myself from all of the constant reminders that are upsetting and so so hard to deal with. My sister and my father are arriving for a visit this next week and I’m so nervous about all of the feelings of loss it is bringing up. Just imagining all of us together makes me soo sad because my mom won’t be there with us, because I know how happy she’d be for a family vacation like this. Because it’s just so sad that we all live far apart and it’s so sad that we all hurt all the time.
Since my mom has died my life has transformed into a life that I don’t recognize and I feel like I don’t want it to be so far away from her. And it just keeps moving further and further from her and i’m just swept along with it. I just want to talk to her so badly, to see her.
But I dread dreaming about her as it always ends up with me crying and feeling out of sorts the next day. i’m tired of anxious chest pains and tears and feeling bad and wrong. so tired.
So pay no heed to the bouts of numb, they won’t last - as my sister said, it always comes in waves.
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