The Week of Emotions

This week always makes me raw.

Even when I know it's approaching, I don't see the effect it's having on me until I get hit hard in the face with a cycle of grief.  Until last year, I just geared up for my father's "deathiversary" with a feeling of gloom and emotions I seemed unable to pinpoint or control. I would feel this heavy sadness settling over me.  Then I would run through cycles of frustration and anger, calm, intense sorrow and more sadness.

Last year it changed because my brother passed away on Halloween.  I felt the fog creeping in the whole week before Halloween.  I was easily annoyed, extra needy and falsely cheerful.  We made it through the holiday with a little help from my special juice and then Nate left for work for the week.  I could barely get out of bed.  The sadness seemed to wholly take over my entire body.  My sister has told me that I should just choose to move on and let it not affect me.  I wish I could.  Everyone processes things differently and I feel very deeply.  No matter the emotion.  It's deep.

When I love, I love hard.  When I'm angry, the walls shake.  When I'm happy, the sun is shining through the greyest of clouds.  Sadness?  Grief's sadness hits me so hard that I feel like an outsider looking in on everyone else.  I wonder how everyone can be SO NORMAL when I feel so...empty?  Sadness makes me feel empty.  Like I don't have anything to give because everything is so wrapped up in my emotions.

I want to cry, sit in a hot bath, care for nobody but myself and have my husband love me and my body to exhaustion.  I'm pretty sure that if all those things happened, I wouldn't be living in reality.  Instead, I am curling up under a heavy blanket so the weight of my sadness is comforted by the weight of cozy warmth.  I'm disconnecting and pulling away, doing everything they say not to do when you are feeling deep grief.

I never thought it would hit in such strong waves, this far out, making me feel like a sailboat on a turbulent sea.  I never realize how deep the pain I'm feeling is going to be until it hits.  I even feel guilty for feeling so horrible, as if I shouldn't because of all the bad he's done in our lives.  I guess I just miss the good.  The late nights listening to music, watching him soothe his upset grand babies, motorcycle rides through the hills, day adventures that turned into weekend adventures, yearly trips to the photo booth at the boardwalk, his cheesecake.  Boy could he make a mean cheese cake!  Not to mention the best biscuits and gravy I've ever eaten.

I don't forget the bad.  I don't forget the abuse and the fear.  I don't forget when he dumped everything I owned on the side of Stevens Creek Blvd. when I moved out of his house.  I will never forget how much hatred he spewed when he found out I was pregnant with Sarah.  I won't forget the intense pain he's caused me over the years, most of which I couldn't even touch on in a single blog post.

I can't just forget.  I can't just go on as of it doesn't matter, push through it all with a fake smile.  I wear my emotions on my sleeve.  Anyone that truly knows me can read my face and see my hurt.  I choose not to hide it and I let myself feel.  Sometimes I feel like I fall too deeply but I never regret it when I come out of the fog and pull myself up.  Sometimes it lasts a few days, sometimes it's a couple weeks.  I have learned that letting go of the control can sometimes give me a sense of calm.  Not forcing myself to FEEL a specific way or plastering on a fake smile IS perfection in the imperfection.

Maybe years from now the week will pass with only a small nagging or a twinge of grief.  Until then, writing out my emotions and letting myself roll through the pain is all I'm able to do with this still raw wound in my heart.