Exhausted

I want out.

I want to go back to being a “normal mum” who didn’t make decisions about death, funerals, or what to do with a headstone, or how to celebrate birthdays for a child who isn’t here to celebrate or worrying every day that my other child might die if she become sick or catch a virus.

I didn’t sign up for this life, and I’d like the one I planned for back.

 

Give me the things many take for granted, uncomplicated small talk, the easy play dates, the simple family photos, the holiday celebrations and naive optimism.

Return me to that place where sad stories were sad stories, not triggers reducing me to a pile of tears one day or a disassociated robot the next. Make me strong again, in the way only the ignorant can be.

 

Paint the world in black and white, in simple colors and shapes. Good things happen to good people, bad actions have consequences. Restore order and balance. Make sense of things.

 

Because this randomness, this roulette wheel of tragedy, it is heavy.

I don’t know that I can carry it, and I see two options from here.

One, I shrug it off. Nothing matters, it’s all out of our hands so why bother planning or getting wrapped up in things that can be taken away? If people can just die, why get close to them at all?

Or two, I double down. I continue carrying this heavy, hard-earned knowledge that I can wake up days my child does not. It shades how I see the world and interact with it.

I know karma doesn’t explain everything and best laid plans can fall apart for silly reasons or no reason at all.

My heart has been cracked open in a way that makes it easier to fall apart again, which is terrifying.

Yes, this keeps me more emotionally connected to my son who died, but that doesn’t make the weight of it easier to bear.

 

Truth be told, the human capacity for compartmentalization means I do a little of both.

There’s no way to know for sure, but isolating that part of myself from time to time – to work, to get through a hard day, to “be present” – does it make it progressively harder to open up again?

Maybe that’s why I’m so tired.

 

Grief is not mentally and physically draining. We need to make talking about our grief more “normal”

Every single one of us will grieve a loved one at some point in our life, please share your grief, your journey and your experiences.

 

If we all talk about our grief, we can normalise it together xx