What amazes me is the paradox: grief is so incredibly immense and overwhelming; and yet it’s astonishing how long people are able to put it up away on a shelf.
It’s so scary when you take that grief down. Look at it. It’s so gargantuan that even approaching it is frightening because what do you do with it? How can you manage, handle, deal with, something that enormous? I’m terrified that if I get too near it that I, like Alice will fall through the looking glass. But I fear that I, unlike Alice, will never be able to get back out of it.
It is easy to avoid the grief. Just clean the kitchen, or run an errand, or make a phone call, or pop in a DVD. At least it’s easy to avoid feeling the pain. But it comes out in other ways. My endless weariness, my lack of energy, my eating habits, my shortness of temper. It’s the way I clench my teeth when I sleep, the way I loose my voice, the way I avoid my friends.
And I have to say: I am angry. Because I’ve really only ever had one parent. One frankly amazing dad. I’ve never had a real mother. Now I’m essentially an orphan. Except that if I were an orphan I would have the power to take care of my brothers and sisters. I wouldn’t have to watch her manipulate and neglect them. I would actually have the power to save them, instead of having to merely watch them be hurt, doing what little I can as their sister.
It hurts that she doesn’t miss him. I’m just saying.
But I honestly don’t know what to do with this ocean of grief. All I can do is dip my toes in tentatively, and then run back to the shore and safety. And even then I’m terrified that some sea monster with lunge from the depths of it and pull me to the depths of it and I’ll be drowning, drowning, drowning in grief.
What do you do to express grief? To process it? To deal with it? To move through it? I have no idea. I have never known anyone who’s died before. All I can think of it 1)crying (which I am not very good at) 2) writing things like this and 3)taking care of others (which I have been doing for quite some time and I am worried I am not taking care of myself enough.)
He was the one I leaned on, the one who took care of me, the one I told all my problems and secrets to. And now I have no one. And everyone is leaning on me and the weight is threatening to destroy me.
I know I will get through this. I constantly pray to be an instrument in his hands, to be strengthened, and lifted up. I am so grateful to my Heavenly Father right now. I think I’m going to be okay. I just worry about my sisters. I think they are going to be hurt a lot, and that they are going to need a lot of healing once they grow up and get out of the situation.
We love you.