Not going well




Baby girl is sleeping beside me, snuggling her favorite stuffed animal.  Yes she still sleeps in my bed.  She didn't used to. She used to sleep very happily in her own bed, then her daddy died in the middle of the night.  That's scary stuff in case you don't know so she started sleeping in my bed where its safe.  It took almost a year and a ton of work like spraying for monsters and me sleeping on the floor of her room to get her back to her own bed, but we did it.   Then we were forced to move out of our home we loved.  That's also scary stuff so she started sleeping in my bed again.  Cause life is scary right now.

I had lunch with a friend today and she asked how baby girl was doing. I said "uuuuuuuuhhhhhhhggggggggg" "that well huh" she said "yup that well" I think I have said this before but baby girl is having a tough year. Its hard to articulate because it's a 1,000 tiny things that seem unrelated and look unrelated unless you know.  If you know grief then you can see how it's all connected. If you don't know grief you probably think I'm full of nonsense. 

The best way I can describe it is how her therapist explained it to me once.  Imagine you are walking down a road of your emotions. If someone bumps into you, that's all it is a bump.  You shake it off.  If it's a big bump you might have a bruise for a few days.  Someone whose grieving (yes you are still grieving after two years) is walking thier emotions on the side of the cliff.  If you are on an edge of a cliff and Some one bumps into you, now you are falling off the cliff. Now you are clawing with your finger nails to try and pull yourself back up. Now you are digging at rocks as they fall in your face, trying to find a tree root to help secure you. That bump wasn't just a bump. That bump left you fighting for your life.  This is baby girl every single day.

Every single day baby girl is fighting for her life to be normal.  She wants to walk down the middle of the road. She doesn't want to be on the edge. Most people don't notice because she is a very good climber but I know she's there.  Sometimes I have it together enough that I am the branch she's using to pull herself up. But most of the time I am hanging beside her trying to push her up with one hand while I hold on to the edge of the cliff from the other. 

I saw Dan's boss the other day. I haven't seen him in about a year. He doesn't do facebook so he's not up to date on what we've been doing.  I update him and then he asks how baby girls doing.  I proceed to tell him all the ways how she's not great.  He looked me strait in the eye and saw inside me and said "your worried about her" yes. I'm worried about her. She's hanging off a cliff.  Her dad isn't here to help me pull her up and I honestly have no clue how to do this without him. 

I wrote a book about my grief, you can read it here: Carry on Castle

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