Yesterday marked two years since my mom passed away. It was a rough, emotional day and I wanted to share something I wrote a couple months ago which really sums up my grief over the past two years.
Grief is an interesting thing. It
jumps up at you unexpectedly. It comes at night and in the morning, but mostly
it’s a long process, full of tears, doubt, fear and loneliness. For the first
year and a half of my grief, I watched myself live my life from afar. I cried
myself to sleep, listened to a laugh that wasn’t mine, lost a lot of weight but
mostly I watched myself become this person I didn’t know. I think part of the
reason that happened, is because the person I knew was defined by my mom. My
beautiful mother gave me strength, courage and confidence. She laughed with me,
hugged me when I needed it most and just let me be myself, always, no ifs, ands
or buts about it. When she died, a part of me disappeared with her.
Through that first year and half, I
lost all confidence in me. I didn’t know who I was, I felt so lonely and dated
someone who just made me doubt myself more than anything. Sometimes, in a room
full of people, many who loved me so much I just felt alone. The real me was a
distance memory, who I hoped to one day find again. I graduated college, and
started a life of independence, that was plagued by loneliness, grief and no
mom to hug, shop for apartment décor with or call after my first day of my big
girl job. Boy did that suck. So damn much.
I continued on searching for my
counterpart who had disappeared. The anniversary of my mom’s death came and
went and so did the holidays. With all of those things, came a new reality that
I wasn’t used to. It meant a fractured family that I wasn’t comfortable around
because I wasn’t myself; the wonderful young women raised by my mother who once
had so much confidence and joy in her heart.
