The other side of the mirror

I look in the mirror and I feel tired. I look tired too but I emanate a feeling of constant tired. Like an aura surrounding me. An aura of tiredness. That’s all that’s left. The joy is gone. The light in my eyes is gone. That “red headed spark” I was known to have has vanished. My magic is gone. All that’s left is tired. I get up every morning and my mother in law asks if I slept well because I look so tired. I slept as well as I always do now, which isn’t well at all. I’m just always tired. I see my friends and they say I look tired, that I’m working too hard. Yes, I’m working twice as hard now, no ten times as hard, you have to account for the grief not just simply the missing person. I go to therapy and she tells me I look tired, she tells me to practice self care, I try, I’m still tired. No amount of rest, or sleep, or fancy massages is going to cure my tiredness.

I see lines on my face, my cheeks are hollow, even though I’ve lost no physical weight. It’s just sank off my cheeks and down my jaw and absorbed into other parts of my body, leaving my face narrow and sad. No longer round and giggly.  I have lines around my eyes, but they are not the laugh lines I am supposed to be acquiring at this age as I watch my children be adorable. They are tired lines, They are I don’t know how I can make it one more day lines.

I have what I call crazy widow hair. My hair is now unruly and wild. I can put it in a tight pony tail or bun every morning and within an hour it’s falling out and going everywhere and looking like I didn’t brush it at all. How the ability to no longer be able to do my hair comes into grief is surprising even to me, but it does, It is related. I make no attempts to fix it, I’m too tired to care. It’s just crazy widow hair, perhaps it is my emotions escaping through my hair.

He is in the other side of the mirror. He sees my aura of tired and he grimaces. He knows it’s his fault I look like this and he can’t stand the thought that he hurt me in any way. “your tired Dollface” his lips say. “I know” I reply, “I can’t fix it”  “I can” he says. He reaches through the mirror and grabs my hand, gently like I’m a princess and he’s taken my hand for a dance. Just that touch lifts some of the tiredness. He leads me the rest of the way through the mirror. He leads me to our room and lays me in the bed. “you need to rest” he says. “It doesn’t work” I reply. “I know. I’m going to fix it” He crawls into bed next to me and holds me. I can feel his breath on my neck. I can feel his chest rising and falling. He is taking calm deep breaths trying to restore my soul. I’m crying but it’s working. With every breath we take in unison a piece of my tiredness lifts and floats away. I can feel myself being restored. I can feel my red headed spark coming back. I can feel my magic restoring.

All were doing is holding each other and breathing. That’s all I need and it’s the one thing I can’t have because it’s all on the other side of the mirror.

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