One of the oddest things about grief is that it affects you in ways that you are not prepared for it to affect you. For instance, I was once a vibrant full of life person. I had a lot of personality and spunk and was always the first to step up to speak out or take the reigns on something. Well, these days the effort to get myself out of bed often feels like too much. I feel like I am drowning in my own sea of sorrow with a pain that I still struggle to comprehend or understand. There are so many things in life that have happened that have made me stop and question what I am doing or how I am going to live.
Life without Adeline seems wrong. My girl was always the light of the room. She was the most beautiful and brilliant personality. She was funny, sweet, caring, and kind. I don't know how to keep living without her. I don't know how to do the simplest tasks like work, applying for jobs, etc. I don't know how to keep going. I just don't. I know that this might sound wrong to some, but until you have walked a mile in my shoes, I would beg you not to judge me.
You see, I was never the type of person who thought that I could be broken. I was strong, full of energy, and had so much that I was interested in. This year has broken me. This experience has left me a shell of the person I was as I have watched myself shatter into a million pieces. It's as though I am shattered and not able to find all of the pieces and glue them back together. I feel so much pain and yet there is nothing for me to do. I try to work through it but the pain continues growing and getting worse. I try to change my beliefs, thoughts, and ideas to be more positive, but there is little positivity that I can see without her here. I do see that I have other children and I am happy to celebrate in their accomplishments, etc....but I have so much extra going on in my head that it is almost impossible for me to get where I need to be. I keep trying, but I keep failing.
Learning to live again is so hard. I have been trying so hard to do just that, but I feel like I am failing on all levels. I know that I am not the mom that I should be. I know that I am struggling so much that I am not able to do the things that I need to for the kids. I know that this is putting extra strain and pressure on Shane and on other people, but there is literally not anything else that I can do at this moment and I am fearful of the things that I can't accomplish and how hard these things seem to be.
I have long suffered from seasonal depression, so the fact that this happened just before we hit those already tough months has made this much harder. I can't help but think of each and every thing that I have done wrong in life in hope that I can find some reason for me to have to live through this pain. I need to find some reason that God decided that Adeline needed to be taken from me.
Life has thrown me a curve ball....a curve ball that I never expected, that I would not wish on my worst enemy. The pain that I feel is so real and the love that I feel for Adeline is so strong that it often times consumes me. I have no way to share that love except through talking to her as I hope that she is around me or writing to her. I feel so lost and so sick all of the time. I am a complete mess mentally and physically it is taking its toll. I get sick, have constant stomach pain, have days where I cannot eat because the normal stresses of life push me over the edge, and have moments where I literally feel as though I am not able to breathe. I have passed out, almost passed out, and been forced to lie in bed far more times than I care to admit. I am not well, but yet I have to pretend to be for those around me and I have to focus on things in a way that will keep my family moving forward....even when moving forward seems to be the last thing that I want to do.
I think that this is the biggest problem to be honest.
I don't want to move forward.
I don't want to keep living without Adeline here.
I don't want to go a day where I do not say her name out loud.
I don't want to stop crying or feeling sorrow.
I don't want to stop feeling the pain.
I don't want to get better.
I want to have her here.
I want to feel some type of punishment for making the wrong choice that morning that led to her death.
I want to live with her not without her.
I want to call out to her and have her talking back to me.
I want to scream and cry and feel that pain as a way of feeling alive, when I feel like I am dead on this inside.
I need to feel the pain from losing her.
I want to just be with her.
The thing that people do not understand is that I am having major PTSD symptoms. I am smelling the smell of the smoke and the fire. When I close my eyes, I hear her yelling down those stairs to me, saying "I am right here mommy and daddy." I can hear myself begging her to just come down the stairs, telling her she has to get down those stairs. I hear her collapse and fall, over and over again in my head each and every day. Sometimes I even feel those few moments in front of my neighbor's house when I felt her die. I can hear myself screaming at the top of my lungs "She's dying, she's dying, my baby is dying." I feel myself trying to get to her all day long. I can be sitting in a chair doing something simple like typing a blog post or trying to grade a paper when the overwhelming smell of smoke will hit me and while I know that I am in this rental house in a room, I am transported back in time to the fire...to the feelings that I had that morning and it consumes me for a few moments as tears stream down my face. I don't know how to explain this to anyone. I don't know how to get my brain to stop reliving the trauma of that day over and over again.
I will never understand why God spared my life and took hers. The world would have been a much better place with Adeline here and me gone. My family would have been in a much better place had it been me instead of her. I feel that I have no purpose and she had so much promise and so much potential. I wish that I had gone with her rather than being kept on the earth to be tormented with my guilt and may pain. I just can't keep going on like this. I can't do it but I know that I have to...so I will continue putting one foot in front of the other even if it feels as though there is no ground beneath them.
I am not going to give up no matter how hard living is. I know that Adeline would not want that. I am never going to give up when she didn't get the chance to live and that would be such a slap in the face to her short and precious life. I am going to get through this. I just need time and I know that I am not giving myself this time that I need. I know that I need to hit the road to get where I need to be. I will be hitting the road soon. I will be taking my great adventure, the great adventure that I was meant to take one day with my girl. I am going to live for her and take that adventure for her. This song describes everything that I am feeling. If I could, I would do anything different I would do anything to have my girl here with me.
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