No one can see it. You can't touch it. You can't hold it. Sometimes I cannot breathe its so heavy. Oppressive. Choking. It makes me physically sick sometimes when I am are carrying it and a lot of times I don't even know I am because it has no image. It's just there. Bearing down me. All I can feel is its presence. And how heavy it is.
I'm not the same person I was before my father died. I will never be the same person again. I've done and gone through most of my life alone. Silently. Like a lost ship out to sea. Hoping I would see a lighthouse somewhere to guide me. Sometimes that light came in the form of family. Or friends. Or a career. Somehow I always found my way. I steered a lot of wrong directions. I followed a lot of paths that weren't really lighthouses at all, but a mirage. A mirage of something that I thought could save me but it was just a figment of my imagination.
Everyone goes through grief differently. I don't expect anyone to understand mine. I know you can't see the air I am carrying but you can tell I'm different. You can tell something has changed. You can tell I am not the person I used to be. But physically. On the outside. I am the same. That's the trouble with air and the weight of it. No one knows your weight because as humans we cannot fathom something until we can see it. I'm scared of what you would see if you could see it. It would probably scare you.
Often times I've felt alone in rooms full of people. Often times I've felt alone in my choice of lifestyle. Often times I've felt alone in my feelings. I've never, in 41 years, feel as alone as I do right now.
There are nights I cry myself to sleep. Praying when I open my eyes that someone, anyone, is there and just holds me. But I open my eyes and every single time I am still alone.
This isn't just about my fathers passing. It's about all the things I never had while he was alive. A wedding. A child. My own home. It's about so many things. And it's heavy. This air is stifling.
This is my therapy. It's what I do and how I can express myself. I have no other outlet. I'm sorry that my sadness seeps over into here and other public social areas, but it's where I am at right now. And I'm not sorry about how I feel. It's just reality. I'm not good at pretending. So I don't. You don't have to read my blog or follow me on Facebook. You don't even have to care. I'm simply here to tell you that the weight of air feels like hell.
I never knew emptiness could weigh so much. When something is empty it's supposed to be lighter. Easier to carry. This is not. I'm barely holding on to it. I'm blessed I can go to work for a few hours a day and set it down because it's truly the only place I can.
I drove to Sisters today to go have lunch at our uncles. It physically hurt my heart to see "the compound." There was a time when I would look at my old backyard and think God this place is beautiful. Serene. Calm. Now I see emptiness. A torn up canvas. Tattered and ragged. It hurts on levels I didn't know you could hurt. It's even worse going into the house. And perhaps I am the only one who sees it that way. I can't change what I see.
I know somewhere, deep down inside an incredibly broken heart that there will days this weight isn't so bad. I don't know when. Or how. I'm not the only one who's lost a loved one. People survive. Life goes on. I just know that right now, at this moment, this is a heavy weight. The heaviest of all.
The weight of air.
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