I am burdened with sad. I feel heavier than I should. Pants fit different, my feet feel heavy. Not a single thing I do makes me feel lighter. I bought lighter shoes. I’m wearing light weight pants and my hair is up. When it’s down it feels like it’s pulling my head to the ground.
I am sleeping too much. Maybe I am tired and that’s the reality but I rarely have tired reality that equals sleep. It is usually just tired and awake. With all the thoughts. I can not just fall asleep. I’ve had a glass of wine a night that helps. I’m intentionally trying to make things quiet enough to sleep. But I don’t really want to sleep. I want to figure things out. Except there is nothing to figure out anymore. So now what do I do? If I can’t figure them out what do I think of? I don’t know and am too afraid to know? I just don’t want to think at all? To feel numb again? Wasn’t I hère once? I used medications to “make it all stop”. Which it tried to do. I know a single glass of wine isn’t even going to work so I have to be certain I stop. I can’t always. But mostly I can. So I’ve gained some control of myself?
Once I thought I was an alcoholic, or once someone thought I was. I rarely even drank. Then I did when I was too sad. Then I didn’t. Then I did again once. Then not again for a long time. Then occasionally, then not. I don’t know that I look at alcohol as a need and something I look forward to. I have a lot of other things to look forward to. I don’t always want to not think or not feel. But sometimes it is just too much. I am just too much for myself. So how can I not be for someone else?
They have to just kind of be ok with themselves so I can deal with me? Deal with me? Why do I feel that one single sad moment in my time means I am not worthy? That I need dealt with? I am heavy and weighed down with all the sad I have tried to get through fast. It has me stuck now. Like I can’t move. Like I can’t breath. But I can sleep. I can eat and I can just barely do anything else. Right at a time I need to be learning to remote learn so my kids will be good grown ups that know math and science and how to stay away from people forever. I need to be thinking of my next step that is too scary, I am avoiding thinking of feelings of love for someone, I am avoiding thinking of new rules and ways of life that I don’t want to conform to out of fear it is in fact the new normal. I don’t want to think about my daughters struggles with life as a teenager with Down syndrome and then an adult with Down syndrome and the struggles as a child and infant she had with Down syndrome. Is she struggling? She can’t get some people to know what she is saying and it infuriates her. She can’t walk as fast as me and gets angry when I don’t go as slow as her. She gets pissed when no one gets that she should be able to eat the same thing every day. She is irritated with trees. Why are there so many trees? Which irritates me. She may not even struggle and I just think she does because I do. I want to carry all her struggles for her. But right now I’m too full of my own. And hers aren’t even real struggles. It is who she is. She just takes life at a different pace and sees life in a different way. One I can’t see. But can if I look past who I hoped she was going to be.
What do I even mean by that to this day? I never properly grieved a loss for a little girl I pictured would be mine. It’s almost too hard to think back that I was upset and felt a loss when told she had Down syndrome. What did I lose? Who? An image? That’s all it was. The thought that comes with carrying and growing a baby. Perfection.
I lost an image of perfection. So I gained in the end. Not that this is an end. But today I can see that perfection really is in the eye of the beholder. That maybe even perfect isn’t a thing. That I see it but someone else doesn’t so does that make it any less perfect or more perfect, or even not at all? Can we even say less or more perfect? Isn’t perfect all by itself the actual meaning? To make it less is not perfect at all anymore and to make it more is not? She is perfect to me but not to others? How can they not see it? I don’t even know that I consider her perfect. That’s such a harsh word. It feels harsh and judgy, full of criticism and expectations set by others for who we should be. It feels like an image only.
I didn’t think I was so full of this weight. That what was really weighing me down was Down syndrome. That I feel burdened not with my daughter but for her. She doesn’t need to carry the weight of weird blood work and funny rhythms of the heart. She doesn’t need to feel that she is any less than others. Does she anyway? I don’t think she even does? I think I worry that I do. I accept her for who she is but still wonder if I grieve who she wasn’t. Which only pushes me further into grief. All those steps of grief and I moved backwards. I know that they aren’t in an order but just given as a list of what to expect them we bounce around them daily or hourly based on outside factors and what life presents daily. I was growing through grief and then I went back. I ungrew? How can we get to grow through grief then go back to the beginning? Is it the beginning? Why are there steps at all? Why are they laid out as a step to take them to be down with? I feel depressed almost and most important I feel guilt for feeling any grief at all with the loss of just an image of perfection. That is not perfect.
Grief is being weird to me. I move around as if I am in tides. Which I have never been in except in a pretend wave pool at a water park. Which nearly drowned me. I fear the ocean for its size but most importantly its power. It’s surface area under water is bigger than land above. It has the most species of anything in one single place. I don’t even know if that’s true but in my head it is. I fear the waves pulling me under then I would die because I can’t breath under water and barely can above but want to see what’s alive under water. It’s ok I’m where I am? Feeling like I’m going to drown? How can anyone say that any single step of grief is ok to be in? Especially one so heavy and one where I could drown in my own grief in the air and not in actual water but am not even really drowning. I don’t want to grieve at all. I wanted to grow through it and jump into the steps of not grief next. Which is life? Living again. Breathing again. I know I am sad my dad is gone but not as sad as I get over the loss of a child I never even had. This will likely burden me my whole life. I could be stuck in these enormous waves. Which feels like I’m going to be pulled under water. But I’m on land. I could also not. That’s grief. Back and forth. In and out. Up and down.
So this weight is not lighter no matter what I wear. No matter how I feel, I guess I have to actually feel heavy to feel light again. She is an amazing stubborn teenager. She doesn’t drive and may never. She may not do some of the things I once imagined she would but maybe she can do the un-imaginable.
Aspenleaf 