The hardest times are the ones that others expect are the easiest. I remember feeling taken aback at Freddie's funeral because I didn't really cry and I remember laughing at the Castle afterwards at something and getting looks as though I was crazy or disrespectful. But it didn't feel real, and it wasn't. There were people around me, I had total love and support from those I chose for it. Freddie wasn't far away and everyone focused on him. I almost felt proud that everyone thought so much of him. The hardest times are when life has continued. The kitchen still needs cleaning, relationships still need nurturing but yet this living is a function. The hardest times are when you realise not much else is happening between the duty and the sobbing down country lanes in the dark.
This week may have been the hardest, yet I thought that about the week before and the week before that. When there's just pure grief for Freddie it is almost a relief because the pain is real. The rest of the tangles and traumas make little sense. "Dirty grieving" is how my psychologist calls it. When one is unable to grieve properly because of other mental distress. Bounteous mental distress. Where to begin there. If I had a penny for every time I have sobbed "is it not enough to lose my son".... The trouble is life is not as we believed the earth once was. It is not simple or empty, static nor flat. Life is a screaming avalanche of beauty, loss, laughter, tears, success, failure and ultimately death. We can try to counter much of the negative aspects but even whilst locked in a cupboard and packaged in bubblewrap we still age and think and die. What I suppose I'm trying to say is that I can't grieve Freddie at all purely when life around me kicks up the dust. Work, whether to have more children on my shortened biological clock, mistrust in my body felt not just by myself, worry for ones family and so I drivvle on in total self pity.
The goal here is to grieve healthily - it's achievable of course. I've spent the best part of a day compiling a leather bound photo book online, only to discover I've ordered it with a screaming typo. My mother is "Mr mother"... And so begins another email argument where I have to pull the "poor me" card. Poor me I really did double check the pictures and spelling three times over, I really am trying. But you see that grieving has made me tired, and clumsy. I thought I'd spent so long looking but the loss has distorted my sense of time. Some days eight hours go by and I realise I've only had a tin of soup and have stared at my phone, aimlessly trying to find ways of remembering a dead child. Biodegradable balloon releases and the like. Other days I feel alive again and time skips alongside me. I start to feel like achievements are possible only for them to be undone by careless errors or reminders of other people's lives which are glaringly more normal and even more obviously less painful. However the person at the end of the email helpdesk probably doesn't give a shit. So that's another good day.
My psychologist tells me I have an issue with creating tabloid headlines in my brain which cause anxiety.... Given that I've just created a crappy day before its even started I'd say he has a point.
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