Beginning, middle, and end

I'm trying to enter this writing contest and I'm having trouble figuring out what to write about. Grief naturally, but their is just so much to choose from.  So I decided to go with a overview of my grief life. Classic outline, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. The beginning is pretty self explanatory; my husband died, thus begins my life of grief. Of course I told more details about my husband dying. You can read about that here if you want but I warn you it will break your heart. The end is decently easy to write cause I'm here, now, six years later, and believe it or not I'm ok. You can read about that here. The middle though, the middle is always the tricky part.

I don't really remember the middle, I remember it was unbearably sucky, I remember it was hard to breathe, I remember everything took all my energy. It hurt, worse then anything has ever hurt before. We did stuff in the middle of it, we moved twice, we went to therapy a lot. Specifics were not coming to mind though. I messaged my besties "I can't think of what to write about for this contest, the words won't come, I think I've lost my writing ability." I was never a really a writer anyway, that was always Dan's thing. I only started writing to help me sleep. Maybe thats my problem maybe I need to stay up till 3 in the morning and then I will be able to think of something to write about. The thing is, I sleep pretty good these days and I didn't really want to mess that up. I like sleep.

Then I had a brilliant idea. I have all this middle stuff written down, I should go look through my old blogs and re-read some of them, that will jog my memory and give me ideas of what to write about. OH MY GOD! Dude we went through some shit. As I was reading some of them I thought 'I can't believe this happened to these poor people' and then I remembered those poor people were us. It was a bit of an out of body experience, I knew it was us, cause I was there, but I wasn't really there, I just did it, I'm pretty sure thats called trauma. 

Here are some examples of what I mean:

"For months? a year? more then a year? I would wake up every day and think "Damn I'm still alive" I was continually surprised." Read more about that here

"The memory of the night Dan died, the awful sickening memory of watching him die played through my mind 24/7.  like a video on repeat. It was always there, The whole world was still going on but that memory was with it." Read more about that here

 "I can't go to school I have to stay with mommy today" That's all it takes and the guttural screams of torture come. Her face is red her eyes are full of tears. She is so upset she can't sit still and she stomps through the house. She moans, she beats her fists against the couch."  Read more about that here

"Her dad died. Suddenly. In the middle of the night. No warning. No good bye. No explanation. Just gone. Just dead. Two years of pretending and acting like she is just fine has caught up to her. She is not just fine. Her Therapist was describing to me how depression is displayed in children. Anxiety, check. Afraid to do things, check. Easily irritable, double check. Easily angry, defiantly check."  Read more about that here

When you compare our 'grief life' to before Dan died, there is just no comparison, that was a completely different life. Sometimes thats what it feels like, like it was someone else's life. Like it was a movie I watched of this happy little family. It doesn't feel like it was mine, but I know it was. It seems so long ago since he talked to me, I really miss his talking, he always knew what to say, he always had such a calm voice. 

The middle, the middle had to have been someone else's "This isn't my life, this isn't what happens to me" I remember saying that over and over and over when Dan died. But it was my life, all those things happened to me and my kid. Panic attacks in the middle of grocery stores and while waiting for the school bus. A child who is terrified that if she leaves mommy alone for even a second mommy will die. How did I get a child like this, my child was fearless. It seems incredulous, maybe that was a horror movie I watched. It couldn't have been my life, but I know it was.

Its hard to fathom where we are in our lives now compared to where we were in the middle. Now a days our biggest problem is that my kid is a full blown teenager. Yup she is. Shes starting high school in like 20 days, were going to registration today. I don't feel like I can call here a Baby Girl anymore, she's so big. I wonder what nick name Dan would have come up with for her by now. Munchkin maybe, that was a favorite he used on someone once. That guy in the picture on the right, I was sure he didn't exist. I knew I would never be in love again ever. Here I am watching another movie that doesn't seem like it should be mine. This one looks like it may have a happy ending after all.

The thing with grief is it never goes away, you never heal, you just learn to live with it. Grief still hits us everyday. I constantly have grief things to blog about, I just haven't had time lately. You could blame this on a lot of things: Corona, I've been stuck in a house with a teenager all day everyday, there's no peace and quite to write at home. Then we were one of those people who said "hey were stuck at home all day lets get a puppy." He's a cute puppy but he's also complete chaos. Then there's the typical reasons like: I have a job, I have a boyfriend and he has little kids. All those things take up time. of course we can always blame Dan. I like to blame Dan for everything these days, after all he's the whole reason I'm here in the first place. The real reason though is I've been busy actually living not just surviving. I've been living with my grief right beside me. I hope to write more blogs about that.

I wrote a book about my grief. You can get it here