sometimes you're just sad.

there is a weight i carry, all the time.  sometimes i feel it more than others.  sometimes you just come home, wash your face and cry.  you think about the fact that you are in raleigh, out with people who you wouldn't have met otherwise and cry.


for me arriving here was this weird fruition.  although i would have never consciously made the sacrifices necessary to get me here, arriving here has been the completion of a dream.  a dream that i had outside of jim, outside of being a mom, just a bria dream.  and i achieved it, this whole week i have had this sense of accomplishment.  it was then that it struck me, i accomplished something i set out to do just for myself.

this life is so weird.  nothing lasts forever, no pain, no happiness.  you must always have one fist closed and one open.  there is no give without take.  you have a baby, but sacrifice freedom, you give up love, and gain energy for yourself.  a dichotomy never existing within but only without.

things fell into place this week in ways i can't explain.  i'll never forget right after jim died someone posted a Facebook update about how God helped them get patio furniture cheap.  and i was just sitting there like "yeah God must've been phoning it on the day my daughter died and you know every day a kid gets diagnosed with cancer, but yeah the creator of this universe, of dark matter and stars and other planets GOT YOU YOUR PATIO FURNITURE ON THE CHEAP! CAUSE HE REALLY CARES" and i hate that in a huge way, obviously evidenced by my choice of all capital letters.  because if God is who is proclaimed in the Bible, if a being out there created everything including this whole vast universe we can't even see, i just really don't think he cares about your furniture.  and so then i have this flip side where i can see things aligning in my life and half of me wants to sit there and be like "this is God!" but i wonder, why intervene in some and not others, and does the fact that things align now necessarily mean causation, did elly have to die for this to happen.

that's what my tiny, human brain struggles with the most.  not drawing lines of causation where there are none.  i just hope, i hope when i die that all my questions are so meaningless, the ramblings of a spoiled child who didn't get her way.  i hope we aren't nearly as intelligent as we think we are.  and what i hope for the most is that i get to hold my daughter.
and i even hope that he did help you get your patio furniture on the cheap.
because honestly what i hope for is that if it matters to us it matters to Him.

inaugural

as i put very literal miles between myself and the pain of ohio, i took a deep breath.  i actually did most of the driving coming down, it wasn't intentional, but it was healing.  about halfway down i felt my chest physically relax, i thought about my daughter and my husband and realized over again that leaving the shadows doesn't mean leaving them.  i felt free.

the American Psychiatric Association compares surviving suicide to surviving a traumatic event, on par with concentration camp survival, bomb survival, etc.  the aftermath of living in that house was necessary for a time because i needed time to gain the strength to say goodbye, but it was very much putting myself in a prison.

i am in a season of pruning and my life just got cut back hard.  it's not the most fun i've ever encountered, watching shit blow up as i am powerless to do anything.  but the blooming that comes after a hard prune is incredible.  things are only made by their opposites, comfort does nothing for us.  it is the sharp edge of steel that refines, the harsh cuts of pruning that make blooms, the scrapes of sandpaper that make smooth.  do not strive for comfort, strive for greatness.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.


time will tell if after pruning, i am able to return to the roots.  i have very little plans, choosing instead to focus on the immediate moments, the tasks at hand.  i have felt myself return unto myself in NC and it is a good feeling.  

i went to one last yoga class in ohio and the teacher said "your mat is a mirror" on my correction she noticed my flexibility but said i needed to gain strength.  i have thought about that a lot.  for years i viewed myself as inflexible, but this was and is inaccurate.  i was unable to see my flexibility and right now i have been unable to see my strength.  shrinking though, does nothing for anybody.  no one is enlightened by the shrinking of another human entity, no one benefits by you undercutting yourself and your abilities.  do not though, do not think that it will come easily, that your greatness will be recognized without strife.  be brave enough to stand in the storm.

nine years.  i have tried to leave ohio for nine years.

this weekend it becomes a reality.  no longer an ohio resident.
it breaks my heart a little, this split in my life.  what i had vs what will be.  for a long time i thought i would have both.  jim and i had talked multiple times about leaving, it just never worked out.  doors always shut that needed to be opened.  same for me when i was single.  i spent the first six months of my senior year of college applying exclusively to out of state jobs.


there is this tendency, i think, in widowhood, to feel guilty.  every time we make a change, especially one that would not be possible if still married, we second guess.  wait? did i want this to happen- did my subconscious somehow confirm what i wanted.

the reality is all your choices change after widowhood.  who i was with jim is gone forever.  one never walks through fire unchanged.  it is odd to see myself change so much in such a short amount of time.  of course i am in the biggest identity crisis of my life, who i was as a mom has changed, who i was as a daughter has changed.  i am changing and evolving and all of my relationships have changed and evolved as well.  some of the most difficult ones to navigate are the ones that only knew jim and i as a couple.

when you are with your soulmate they light up so many different facets of you.  but they don't light up every facet- it's not possible.  you are two different people with different personalities.  now that my energy is no longer diverted into the facets that were lit up by jim - i am struck with a very real sense of coming back into my own.  this is not a good thing or a bad thing, it's just a reality within a marriage and within the ending of a marriage.  you are a different person in a marriage and a different person outside of it.  to continue on as i was would be dishonest to myself and cheapen what jim and i had, as if i could have been that person without him.

it would be a dishonor to continue on in who i was, a slap in the face of who jim made me, what he brought out in me.  those parts of me are lost forever, lost in the deep of what we built together.


so now the new girl starts out.  for a couple more days i have one foot in, one foot out.  unable to fully embrace until i fully say goodbye.  boxes, boxes, boxes.  some stuff comes with, some stuff stays.

who i was is no longer, but she will always be a part of me.  jim and elly- i can't wait to take you both with me.

to my kiddos here with me, you.are.my.sunandmoon.  the complete opposites of and fiercest protectors of each other.  i hope i do you proud.  i promise the first boxes unpacked will be your toys.

xoxoxox.

everywhere i go.

everywhere i go i take them with me.  this ache that will never quite subside, it will always be felt.  what i hear so often is that i am strong but it's funny because i think the people who are strong are the ones who aren't afraid of my pain, who don't mind being scarred with me because the fire affects them too.

i remember there was a popular blogger who lost her four year old son in a tragic accident maybe two years ago?  i remember being horrified by it and literally thinking to myself "well... won't be reading that for a while"

sometimes the most difficult thing in the world is to watch those close to you suffer.  i write so much about being alone and feeling alone.  but there have been many who have chosen to stand in the fire with me, many who show up and show up even when i don't call back right away, even when i am spacey and overwhelmed by my text messages and don't respond back.

by leaving ohio, i am leaving a lot.  i am going to a tribe but also leaving a tribe.  it is hard, hard for me to leave.  i am sad and emotional and at times overwhelmed with the enormity of leaving all these people behind.  but then i think of trying to stay, of trying to rebuild here and i realize, it just can't happen.

also this is just a general FYI but if someone you know is hurting or going through a rough time, say something, say anything.  no- you don't have the right words, yes you might stay something stupid, but you will be forgiven for stupid comments and most likely provide fodder for the person who is going through the difficult time because it's always good to have a laugh in your back pocket.

silence is salt on an open wound.  and if you want me to give you a specific start with "i am so sorry, there are no words"

everything is still at four am.

i've been up since four today.  i am laying here in my bed, alone.  i had a cup of tea after i woke up to help settle my mind.  it's been three nights of dreams.  you know those people that are like "oh gracious, i just never remember my dreams" or the more infuriating, "i don't dream" (SIDE NOTE: YES YOU DO!) (another side note: thanks google!)

i want to punch those people in the face.  i mean sometimes at least.  my dreams are haunting.  even at their best i never wake up happy because of my dreams.  it's been like this since i was a child.  i remember in college one night i dreamt so vividly about being murdered that i stayed up the entire night after it and cleaned our whole apartment.  the girls probably didn't know what hit them.  waking up for an eight am class (brutal!) to see their chipper roommate mopping away after scrubbing out the microwave

"hey guys just had some extra time! just working away here, don't mind me! oh what?  no no!  i've been up for hours.  yeah just had a dream about being murdered, couldn't get back to sleep, you know the usual!"



in my dreams now there is always something missing.  an elusive piece that is never within my grasp.  i'll see people or go places and feel an ache inside.  not even in my dreams can i escape the loss.

i think at this point, i have suffered so greatly and so intensely that it will be a relief when i leave this world.  i remember reading passages that Paul wrote about wanting his journey to be over so he could be with Christ and thinking "that guy is CRAZY! who wants to leave earth?  it is soon totally awesome here!"

i get it now, here there will always be un-fullfilment, here there will always be suffering, here is not where we are meant for.

companionship

i get these moments.  they are coming less and less frequently of course, but they still come.  tonight is friday night.  for those of you who are unaware, friday night is a couple's night.  it's a bottle of red, take out and let's talk about our feelings kind of night.

the kids went hard today, playing and running around and in turn, i put in a good amount of effort at bedtime as they were both overtired and doing their just absolute favorite game which is trading off screaming.  all of a sudden, like magic, they were both out by 7:23.  in my old life, this would have me running around, celebrating in sweats, jim and i high-fiving at our good fortune and amount of TV we could cram in together, cuddled on the couch.

tonight i just stood there, looking at the numbers on my stove.  the stark realization that my life-sharer was absent, and would forever be absent.



sometimes i wonder if i'm really healing or just getting better at blocking it out.  mentally, most of the time i just don't go there.  the horror that i lived for twelve days is too much.  i don't know what other victims do, sometimes i think about it, people who live through torture or imprisonment and survived.  do they just block it out?  can you heal from it?  a big part of me thinks that i won't ever heal on this earth.  if you love, some wounds just cut too deeply to ever close.

if you got to the top, you gotta go to the bottom.


the crazy thing is, most days (i mean some not the case) but most days i am strong enough to say i would do it over again, to say i would choose him over again.  i remember taking a walk with him one evening and telling him that almost every good thing in my life had resulted from meeting him.  never in my life have i felt more complete love than when i was with him, and never ever have i loved someone so fully and completely.  what we had is so difficult to put into words, even as a self-proclaimed writer, i fail.  i can't describe to you the comfort, the safety, the security that being with him provided me.  i mean the man worked two minutes away and came home to see us on lunch for fuck's sake.

it's so weird to me that when elly and jim died some people chose to immediately bring up "well, at least you have the other two" or "don't worry you're young, you'll get married again" - that one i hear a lot.  it's not that i don't want to get married again or even that i can't see myself getting married again.  it's just - to cheapen what jim and i treasured and honed and worked at for six years to a passing fling of "it will find you again" is insane to me.  not to mention by the way folks, just got burned by love pretty badly, not really looking to just jump back into a relationship.

i know though, that people mean well, that most are probably just trying to instill hope and vibrancy into my life.  i also know that as much as i talk, which is a lot, i am, at the end of the day, the only person in my own head, just like jim was the only person in his.  so, on an existential level, isn't this human experience we share bizarre?  so many connected points and yet still such isolation exists.


jim,
i missed you tonight love.  we would have had fun, i think- talking about the end of summer, getting excited for the vacation we had planned with the three kids next week, worrying about how they were all going to do in the car for a 12 hour road trip.  i would have probably been talking your ear off about how excited i was to show you hilton head and what new thing addy and lane and elly had done that day.  we would have talked about sending addy off to preschool in a couple weeks and how we couldn't believe that day had come already.  you might've convinced me to join you for a cigar instead of the couch since it was such a nice night and we would have relaxed together on our driveway.  you rubbing your temples, shaking the stress of your week off as you switched into family mode.  me being my usual annoying self full of energy and zeal!

i miss the simple things with you love, mostly just the sheer companionship of you.  i wish you were here babe.  i'm pretty sure you wouldn't even recognize me these days.  this girl that gives zero fucks and is doing it all on her own and definitely has shorter hair than you ever knew her with.  or maybe if you saw me today you would just grab me and hug me and say "i knew you could do it"

memoir.

where hope comes from.

i am working on a memoir, just writing really at this stage.  hoping beyond hope that eventually my story will be shared.  it's amazing as i sit here in starbucks, writing down what has happened to me, to the people i love, there is a voice that sneaks in, "you are damaged, people won't want to be with you if they find out, you bring destruction wherever you go, look at what has been done to you, you deserve this"

and it's weird, i do have this amazing trifecta of death in my life while yet i endure.  i'm not really sure why i am the one who has survived.  i would have obviously traded places in a second to secure elly's future.

my wounds are gaping.  there is no doubt that for me, i could never be made whole without a creator. what would fill the wounds i have endured?  what would give me worth and value when everything i love is torn asunder?

you know how when you're watching a reality show and you see a girl on there sleeping around and she's like "i have no feelings, it doesn't matter! i don't care" and you look at her and you go.... "oh honey, it's written on every line of your face, you do care, you just want love"  and it's not a judgment thing or a casting stones thing, it's just this lie that she has bought into.  obviously i am a girl so i identify more with a woman's way of thinking.  it's just, that's sometimes how i feel too, everyone wants to be loved, everyone wants to be worthy, we just cast out this net hoping something sticks, hoping that something gives us worth.

to have to bear that burden for someone else, to have someone find their identity in my love, that's crazy... cause i'll fail them.  and vice versa, for me to provide someone with their love and structure and support, it's an impossible task.  that's what grief does, it shines this light on how damaged we are, and damaged people cannot fix damaged people.

we cannot get our worth and our value from our surrounding, from our wealth, from other people.  i know, i know, we think we can.  i get it, i did for years, i got it from jim, i got it from my family and sure there might've been a small, nagging hole that was felt, but it was easily filled with superfluous things.  it is only in being crushed that i see the truth.  the truth about my redeemer, the truth about where my value comes from.

it's been so hard to go through jim's things.  because i look around and think "look at all of the stuff that didn't save him" ultimately, the earth and it's trappings cannot save.

even in my brokenness, my value remains secure.  i remain loved.