Grief Demon

Some of my posts are inspirational. Some are funny. Some are like this one...raw emotion that I have no place to put except on a piece of paper or on this blog. I usually keep the darker side of things a bit private, save a couple people that I really trust with my heart. Not tonight. Not on this day. I am baring myself in front of you, for no reason other than sometimes we all need to see the realness of humanity.

I am a mess.

I am sad, angry, and every other emotion that you can relate to that negative space that we all have inside of us, but rarely talk about openly. 

Grief is a multifaceted emotion. I dare say there is no emotion quite like it. At least, not in my experience. In a day, I can go from laughing with happiness to feeling a sadness so deep that it's all consuming. I try to fight it. I try to busy myself with menial tasks to keep me occupied, but it's sitting right there on my shoulder... a little demon, reminding me of that pain that will live inside me forever.

And I do believe it is forever. Perhaps, over time it the pain presents itself less and less, but it is always just waiting for a memory to spark it back to life and fuel the fire that burns you from the inside out until you are engulfed in flames. 

I know the grieving cycle, for what it's worth. I am very self aware and not afraid to reach into the depths of my feelings and see them for what they are. But grief, this is one demon that loves chaos. It loves to knock you to your knees when everything seems OK. It likes to take the wind out of your sails and leave you stranded on a vast sea with nothing in sight. It likes to remind you of what you've lost. It steals warm feelings and chills you to your core.

Grief leaves you begging for a reprieve from reality. And you don't get that option. There is no stop button on life. You can't just pause or fast forward through the hard parts. You can either choose to fight for the light that you know exists, or you can give into that voice that says, "this is too hard to survive."

I am a fighter. God, am I am fighter. I don't go down easily and I try to always see the positive in things even when it feels impossible to find a spark of light. Grief reminds me that I can't always fight my way through to the other side. Sometimes, I just have to wait it out and give into a sadness that literally makes my chest ache. It makes tears run out of my eyes with no ability to stop them.

It makes me feel like all the good in my life is behind a wall that I cannot scale.

And I fucking hate it. I hate that powerless feeling that comes over me. I hate being reminded that I am still only human and that there is something I can't fix. You can't repair grief. You can't therapy it away. You can't medicate it away. It's always there....always waiting.

Perhaps the beauty in it, and God knows I always have to go to that place of figuring out where the beauty is, is that I loved someone so much. I allowed myself to be open to a person who crawled right into my heart and rested there. 

And I'll do it again. This self perpetuating cycle of letting others in to that space that is only reserved for those that are too special to turn away from....that's what living is about.