The 5th marked my 9 year wedding anniversary to Jake, and for whatever reason this year hit me harder than any year before. Maybe it is because I am more aware emotionally, of all that I have lost with his death and realizing that it brought about the death of so many other things was what hit me most. When he died, I thought that my grief was only for him but now I can see that it was for much more than just him. It was grief for the death of who I used to be before him, during my life with him and it was saying goodbye to all I was until he died because that girl is gone now.
I can remember how cruel everyone in my life was to me when Jake died, how I was chastised for needing to go to his funeral. I needed the closure and certainty that he was really dead because I was so terrified of him finding me and finishing what he started in Hawaii. Nobody understood why I needed to go, why it fucked with my head that I never saw him get in the accident or lay in that hospital bed, and i wasn't there when they pulled him off of life support to see him take his last breath. I didn't see his body afterwards and I couldn't even see the ashes in the urn so I needed to be at that funeral to see the process of everyone grieving in order to know that it was really real. After the funeral was over I came back home still not knowing for sure and it took me holding his torn and gravel filled clothing still sticky wet with his blood, to show me the finality of his life and mine.
The fact that anyone in my life gave me shit for going makes me sick, these are people who are supposed to love and care for me yet tried to make me feel badly for trying to give myself closure. For the first time in my life, I didn't care what they said and i didn't listen to them. I went against them all and I went to Jake's funeral, and i am glad that i did because i cannot imagine where i would be had i not had that closure for myself. Where does one get the notion that they have any business at all deciding for someone what is right and what is acceptable in a situation like that? To tell someone that it is wrong to attend their spouses funeral and that they are an idiot for doing so sounds more crazy than I feel, and that is fucking crazy. I don't give a shit if you don't understand why I feel the way i feel because it has no bearing on what my choices make me feel like inside. If you could experience a small dose of the hell that I live inside of then maybe you could see things differently and not be such a selfish, judgmental asshole and tell me what to feel and how to live my life.
Imagine being the driver in a car, but you are blindfolded and your hands are handcuffed to the steering wheel on 10 and 2. The radio is blaring Slipknot or some other crazy heavy metal thrasher song, and there is the smell of burning flesh all around you. You have passengers in the front and the rear and you are on a dark, winding mountain road filled with potholes and rocks the size of baseballs. Your goal is to navigate down that road in tact without killing yourself or your passengers and you must do it based on what the passengers tell you to do. You must listen to all 3 of them yelling at you at the same time and you must decide who is right and who is wrong in telling you where to go. You cannot take the blindfold off, you cannot turn the radio down you cannot open a window to air out the stench that is making you sick....you just sit there and fucking drive. That is it, could you do it? Could you make it down that mountain in one piece without wrecking? Could you steer that wheel with your hands bound to it without driving off the edge? You could try, and maybe one out of a handful of people to try might make it out of pure luck but i say? FUCK NO you wouldn't make it, not on your life. So now that you have that visual how the fuck do you feel knowing that YOU have been one of those passengers in someones life? YOU have contributed to someone losing their life or their mind, or both. YOU have been in that seat yelling and screaming at someone to do this and do that, go this way no go that way, you aren't listening! you are going the wrong way! turn the wheel! slow down! speed up! Can you see it now? Yes, that is YOU, how does that make you feel?
Better yet, how do you feel if you relate to the Driver in this scenario? I am the driver, that has been my role in this life and I want to take off the blindfold and make it safely down this mountain. I don't want to be in the dark, blindfolded to what is around me, I want to see what is going on so that i can save mine and my passengers lives. I don't want that stench filling my nose, I need to breath and smell fresh air and the flowers, the water, the earth. I don't want to be bound to the wheel, to what controls the vessel I am steering I want my hands to be free so that I can guide the car wherever I think it is safe to go. For too long I have tried to navigate my life by listening to the screams of my passengers and it has taken everything that I am away, leaving me scared and afraid of always doing the wrong things. Fear has taken over my rational mind and I have lost the ability to know what is right for me, what path is the one I need to walk on my own, and that makes me angry as hell.
I do not know why I allowed myself to live this way for so long, because it has caused me to be in the pain that I now live with everyday. Nobody but myself has to lay down at night and have the thoughts that I do about my life and this journey. I am the only one who has to look at myself in the mirror, and it is me who can no longer recognize the woman staring back.....what do you say to that? No matter how much I want for others to understand my pain, a part of me doesn't want them to truly understand because nobody should know what I feel like. How do I navigate myself through my hell and make sure that I come out whole on the other side without destroying what is left of me or others around me? I have spent countless nights wondering how the hell am I going to survive now that I have no idea who i am. Just because I was capable of surviving my life up until now does not mean that I can do it anymore.
I want to be whole again, to find my identity and feel like I belong somewhere again. I love my life with Jim and Jacob, they give me things that I could have never imagined having in my life. But they cannot give me the one thing I so desperately need right now, they cannot give me Michelle. Nobody can, I don't even know that I can but I am still fighting to try and find who I am so that I can make it another day. Over the last 4 days or so all I could think of was how much I didn't want to be here anymore like this, in limbo and in so much pain. I couldn't even begin to describe how deep my pain is or where it even comes from but it is slowly creeping into the one last bit of me that wants to live. No, this doesn't mean I am going to off myself it just means that I am exhausted and running out of options and give a shit, that is all.
The beautiful thing about life is that for every tomorrow there is a chance for a new start, and the fact that we got to put our pain behind us from yesterday to take on new pains is beautiful too. I used to lay my head down at night next to Jake and tell myself, "if I wake up alive tomorrow then what i thought was impossible is really not as bad as I believed". So, If i should wake up alive tomorrow then my pain right now is not as bad as i think it is because if it were, It would kill me and for now i'm still breathing.
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