Grief is not the Problem

I haven’t blogged lately. I’ve been busy. Busy is a double edged sword. Busy keeps my mind distracted, allows me to feel like a normal person. But busy is exhausting. The energy required to get through a day of work, a day of errands, a day of planning events, takes its toll. When busy ends I am trapped with my thoughts, can’t get outside of my own head. All of the thoughts and emotions that were pushed aside, come flooding back as soon as there is idle time.

So many people want to “solve” my grief. But grief is not a problem to be solved. Grief is a state of being, like happiness. No one would view happiness as a problem and grief is just as valid. They want to solve my grief to make them feel better. They are uncomfortable with it. They think that giving the loss meaning, a purpose, will make it okay, will allow me to move on and all will be right in the world. But there is no purpose or meaning that makes any of this worth it. There is nothing, NOTHING worth the cost of a child. And I am comfortable in my grief. This grief will be a lifelong companion. Maybe one day it will take some steps back, won’t be the primary player in my daily life, but it will forever be present and I have already gotten used to being covered in its blanket.

The ones that truly care, don’t try to make me feel better or get rid of the pain. They know they can’t. They don’t spout useless and offensive platitudes and are comfortable just sitting in quiet, or listening when I need to talk about Ariella. I am lucky to have such a good support system. I am lucky that people I barely knew have shown up. I am lucky that people I knew years ago but had since lost touch with take this so personally and feel our loss so deeply. I am lucky that those who have been there more than make up for those who haven’t. They say that in profound loss families are often torn apart but friends and even strangers become family. And this is so true. Some of our family has been wonderful but friends and strangers have more than stepped up to fill the roles of those who haven’t been there. I am no longer allowing myself to waste my energy caring about the ones who disappeared because I have the ones I need.

Day to day life is really hard. I still just can’t care about the minutiae of living. It is all so petty and trivial. None of it matters. It does matter greatly to those who haven’t experienced such profound loss but I can no longer relate. Perspective takes a huge shift and I feel selfish because I just can’t care about stuff that in the grand scheme of things is just not a big deal. Maybe in the immediate aftermath people hugged their kids tighter, vowed not to take their lives for granted, realized what is most important. But I’ve seen that gradually shift, back to complaining about the daily annoyances, not appreciating what they have, wanting more, wanting better. And it’s natural. It’s only human. But while everyone else moves on, gets to worry about the small stuff I only care about the huge, gaping hole left in my life. And there is a huge disconnect, a distance forming that I don’t know if I will ever be able to bridge.

I don’t feel fully present in this life. I feel like I am watching myself going through the motions with a sense of detachment. I do what I have to do to survive. Even in groups of people, I hold back, don’t fully partake. Because most of my thoughts are with Ariella and when I think about her I think about the futility of everything else. And it just doesn’t matter. My biggest fear these days is that I will live a long life. But I feel like I’m living with 1 foot here and 1 foot in Heaven and can’t be fully here. I don’t want to be here.