Please don’t try to fix it

If I am with you and something overwhelms me with sadness, please don’t try to distract me by telling me what I should be excited for. If you ask how I am, and I am truthful, please don’t try to change my focus by listing all of the things I should be grateful for.

If I am crying because it is a significant date (or I came across a photo of Albert unexpectedly, or one of our songs came on in a restaurant, or I see the motorcycle he road, or pass the market we used to go to together…) please don’t point out how I am so much more fortunate than others in the world and so I should decide to be happy.

If I am overwhelmed with a longing for the love of my life and my lost future, please, don’t try to fix my pain. There is no fixing it.

Instead, please hold out your hand and tell me that it is here for me to hold. That your shoulder is available for me to cry on, that your heart is big enough for both of us. That your angels are ready to fight my demons, and that you are here.

 

08/08

I don’t want to mark this day each month. I don’t want to feel it approaching, anticipating the flood of emotions that will come whether I want them to or not. I want to go back, to return to when we celebrated with joy 16th of each month, marking the day we met that July.

There is relief in nothing, and I now know there never will be. I can feel other things now, I learned it is possible to feel other emotions alongside the sadness, and I am grateful for that. But missing you never stops, it never lessens, I think about you every minute.

I have engaged in multiple forms of therapy, joined new activities, made friends, reached out (sometimes desperately) to old friends and even strangers, withdrew, attended grief groups, talked with mediums, gone to church, and meditated. I’ve done EFT, been to energy healers, acupuncture, reiki, and sacrocranial therapy. I prayed for death for six months. I’ve drank far too much and too often, distracted myself, and kept endlessly busy. I’ve talked and written to you endlessly and cried rivers of tears…

Still everything is unbearable without you.

I want to go back to the time when 8 was my number – my birthday month, my numerology number, my race number – my lucky number. I hate that I mark this day each month as the day you died. I hate all of this.