Changing Grief

People say that time heals, that it gets better. I'm not sure it's really gotten better yet, but it is changing. It's hard to explain if you haven't been through it, but I'll try. Grief is a lonely road. Because even if you have support, you know that no one truly "gets" it or can understand how much you miss them or how hard it is. 

I guess I could say that now I don't dwell on the grief and on what I lost as much. I needed to do that for a while, I needed to be sad...but now I want to be over it. Not over Matt, but over feeling sad. I want to be happy. I'm still trying to find how to do that now, without him here. 

The grief now has has turned more into this constant, unsettled, anxious feeling. I do have less bad days, and I have more glimpses of happiness and hope for the future than I once did, which I'm thankful for, but I still miss that feeling of peace and contentment I once had. That feeling is gone, and it just feels weird...that's the only way I can put it. 

I still feel sometimes like I'm living someone else's life. I still feel like I don't have a "place" anymore. And I'm still not used to coming home to an empty house, with no one to look forward to seeing and talking to and the end of the day. It's all I've known for so long.

I was just thinking the other day about how people comment and tell me I look "happy". But the thing with grief is that it's not just walking around all sad and mopey all the time. You see a smile on my face and think I look happy, and maybe in that very moment I was...but what you didn't see was me crying 20 minutes later. You didn't see me having a full on meltdown the night before. You don't see the emptiness inside. Because grief isn't crying all the time. It's also smiling and laughing. It's feeling happy at times, but never without the underlying sadness, emptiness, and that dull ache deep down inside you carry with you always. Just because you smile and seem to be coping well, doesn't mean you aren't grieving. It just means you're choosing to live life and move forward the best you can with the grief.

I'm still trying to navigate this life without him. It's the hardest thing I've ever done. I still sometimes can't even believe I'm here in a world without him.... how can this be? He was my everything. He really, truly was. Life is so different now, and I'm still adjusting to it and processing it and learning how to live with this "new" me, with these new feelings. I'm getting more and more used to the new norm... but my heart still feels homesick. Will it always be homesick? Will I always feel unsettled?

I do have many good days now-I don't want to make it sound like I'm miserable alllll the time. But I still have those sad, fearful, hopeless moments. I have nights where I still go down to the creek, my "cry spot", and just sob and wail, where no one can hear me...it's just not every day like I did in those first few weeks/months. But still, even though they are less frequent, in those moments, I miss him so much it makes me want to puke. In these moments, I feel so alone. In those moments, I feel like I'll never be okay again. In these moments, I can't pray... so I just whisper "Jesus" over and over again.

And then sometimes, I think because I feel like I'm doing okay and don't feel as miserable as I used to, or that because I am wanting so badly to forward, there are days I almost "forget" that I'm still grieving and wonder why I feel so strange, so "off", so uneasy. I feel like I shouldn't be feeling this way now, so I try to push it away. But it's when I've gone for a while, trying to just live life and not dwell on my loss, trying to move forward, trying to stay distracted, that it sneaks up on me. I've learned that I can't run from it or push it away.  It's not going to go away after a year, or on any certain timeline, even if I want it to. I do all the things to stay busy and distracted, but it's always there lurking beneath the surface, waiting to come bubbling back up, and it's out of my control...and I finally have to just stop and acknowledge it and let the tears fall, even when I don't want to and am tired of crying. No matter how bad I want to be done with it, grief is like, nope, you can't get rid of me. 

I don't want to feel the pain anymore, but there's no avoiding it. I want to be happy and content again and not feel like this, because it's uncomfortable, because it's opposite to my nature, and it's not what I'm used to feeling... but this is my reality. I may never have that same feeling of contentment again, and I'm still adjusting to living with that. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I'm only a little over a year out. That's really nothing. 

Lately I've been feeling anxious...I don't know if that's the grief that's morphing into a different feeling, or if it's just the uncertainty of my future, or what, but I'm trying my best to cling to God and trust Him, I really am. I know He is good and only wants good for me. I know this. I trust this. But some days are still just hard....so I'll take all the prayers I can get. I know I have sounded like a broken record this last year, but thank you to all of you who still read and let me use this blog to express my thoughts. It really does help to just get it all out, to tell someone I'm not fine, even if it is my far away, internet friends. :)