Bone Deep

I didn’t know it was possible to hurt any more than I have been.  Again another thing I was wrong on.  My pain, my grief, my longing has deepened over time.  It is bone deep.  My mind says her name or talks to her begging her to come back to me.  It is on a constant loop.  I know when I am talking to someone that they only have half my attention because the other half is screaming for Hayley.  Grief is destroying me from the inside out.  It is all I think about.  It is my companion.  I walk with it.  It is always beside me like a dark shower.

I have not been out of the house since the surgery except for infusions.  This week I was driving again and taking myself to the doctor appointments.  On Friday I went to Bartells for a prescription and the bank in Safeway.  It was surreal.  I feel like I am walking in a bubble of grief.  Can people see that there is something wrong with me?  It was an effort to put one foot in front of the other.  When waiting in line I had to lean against a display which almost ended in a disaster of bottles going everywhere.  So much for the bubble.  I felt like a robot walking through Safeway to the bank.   Like I was watching myself go through the motions.  It is a surreal feeling that I am trying hard to find the words to make you understand.

It is the response to my raw posts on Facebook that keep me going.  I know there are people thinking of me and grieving with me.  The week was particularly hard because now I know another mom in this club.  I met her on a plane ride back home from Phoenix in December.  We became friends on Facebook.  She was traveling with her daughter around Hayley’s age.  They were coming to spend  Christmas time with her oldest son, Jordan.  He was a recovering addict and doing well here in Renton.  We talked the entire flight.  She let me talk about Hayley seeing such a similarity with her relationship with her daughter.  I learned about Jordan’s battle and her constant worry.  In the past week Jordan had a relapse and is gone.  Like Hayley just gone.  I reached out to his mom and we have talked.  I am watching her go through those emotions and the pain of the first days.  Dealing with services and practicalities.  Her feeling are so familiar and raw that I find myself reliving the same time.

I am constantly thinking and dreaming about that week.  What could have been done.  I have relived the moment I rounded that corner and saw her dying in front of me.  I wake screaming her name just as I did on that horrible night.  It is a nightmare at sleep and at wake.  I can’t stop these loops in my brain.

Is this mental illness?  Will I know?  I cannot bear to live without her but I can’t leave my wonderful son.  It is a constant tug of war.

Maybe I am bored.  Since the surgery and not eating for 2 weeks my energy has been zapped and I do little but sit on the couch with CNN on the tv, not really listening.  I cry over the mess of my house but have zero energy to do anything about it.  I have lost 30 pounds from my high point.  I can’t even get excited about it.  Clothes are more comfortable and that helps a little with my physical well being.  But now I start the work of introducing soft food to my stomach and constant nausea.  I have had a hundred moments of what the hell was I thinking.  Already my blood pressure has improved and I am off of one of my medications.  If I have made that much progress in 2 weeks what else can I accomplish.

I was counting on this new challenge as a way to distract me from my grief.  But all it has done was make everything harder.  My grief is still beside me; now he is also hangry.  Unfinished house projects bother me, sometimes Scott’s voice bothers me.  I don’t recall a phase in the grief book of “everything annoys the shit out of you”.  I am going to have to write my own book and tell it like it really is.

I am happy for everyone celebrating graduations, weddings, and accomplishments.  Friends of Hayleys.  But she is stuck back as a Sophomore in College.  It’s not fair, or right.  This beautiful, funny and kind child is just gone, ceased to exist.  I still cannot wrap my mind around it.  I lay on my bed and stare down the hall to her bedroom door wishing she was in there watching her tv shows and at any moment will burst out and come down the hall and say “feed me mommy”.

Maybe I need a new hobby.  I have painted so many rocks it will take me weeks to hide them.  Don’t forget the fact I don’t want to walk anywhere.  I am crocheting a crappy blanket.  I am looking to start school June 25 to retrain to become a college counselor.  But I am nervous.  Do I have the attention span to try to learn new material?  Is there room in my brain with all of the grief.

I know the same people are here for me, I know who you are, I just have to ask.  But I know I won’t ask, they have their lives to live.  I remember a huge number of people say “I won’t stop asking you to go to coffee or go for a walk I promise”.  Guess what?, they have stopped.  I wonder did I say “no” one too many time and they gave up on me.  At the same time I think good, I can live a lonely existence with my shadow, grief.  Together we will walk through what life is left for me.