"Are you even hearing yourself right now? This is why we believe you're fully competent for this initiative. Whatever you've gone through has been training you for these moments. You don't ever stop fighting, there's always another threat. A threat...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
I didn't feel anything at first.
I felt empty.
I was empty.
Empty....
...Empty...
...Empty...
...Empty...
...Empty.
Nothing felt real anymore.
Every day was a haze of pain. Pain so physically and emotionally blinding that numbness began to swell. I was in a growing bubble of agony that wouldn't pop. I couldn't keep track of anything. It made me sick. The same ache was just repeating over and over and over. It felt like it would never stop.
What was I truly feeling?
Was this even real?
How would I know?
Did it even matter?
I was utterly weak, my body was still ridden with pain. Every single part of my body ached, even if I didn't move an inch. My arms and legs felt like they were bolted down, my head head felt like it was being pierced with thousands of needles, my feet felt like I was walking on hot coal and my abdomen felt like it had been torn in half. It seemed like the agony would never fade. It felt like the pain would be constant, not even dimming to a dull throb.
That wasn't even the only pain I felt.
I know that some people like to cry out in sorrow when they loose someone, to yell and scream and cry and bite and kick until their throats become raw, their faces become wrinkled with tears and their bodies are on the verge of shutting down. I thought I was like that...I was with my father's death. But this felt different at first, the void was unrelenting but sure enough, once the physical pain went away, the violent emotions ran ramped.
I would wake up constantly in the middle of the night, my body shaking from the horrific dreams, my face streaked with the ongoing stream of tears itching my eyes red. The days were just as bad, just less dynamic. The aching in my heart was what truly tore me apart. It felt like a separation from the self. Loosing that baby took away a part of myself, the excited and fulfilled part, the part that yearned for the life that was ahead of me, the life that I had fought so fucking hard for. The breakdowns weren't constant but they were sudden and unexpected, just when I felt at a state of emotionless it would hammer me down.
But I also know that others tend not to show any response at all. They burrow deep into their own cave of sorrow and they cannot be coaxed out of it. Sometimes they out up a front to hide it, they drink their problems away or do lines to get a hit just to feel a high again, even just for a few moments. Thor was one of those people and I knew it. It took so damn long for him to finally pull out of that shell and fall back into himself again. Retreating back there for the second time...he wasn't going to come out any easier this time...this time he didn't have me as a constant to support...I could barely keep myself afloat.
Grief is personal.
Everyone handles it differently.
To me, grief was that one visitor that knocks on the door every few years and walks right in and one day, they just don't leave at the end of the day.
I just felt so lonely.
It was a biological loneliness.
Thor was in no state of mind to be the one to fill in that overwhelmingly empty hole. Every day, I called out to him and sure he was there but his mind wasn't. He was mentally far away and that only broke me further.
The pain and confusion Thor and I both felt only led us to slowly grow apart...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
