Zero Sum Game?

Day 1664.

I haven’t journaled in a while.

I haven’t wanted to tell anyone who is in the early throws of child loss, that this far on, that there are still terrible days… But to merely write that, would be an over simplification of how I feel now, because it’s not all bad.

It has taken me a while to distill my current emotion. Grief is complicated.

At first, after hearing that Luke was gone, I was in a freeze. Emotion was at full volume, in full frame, blinding.
I barely functioned except for in the most primal state.
If food was put in front of me I would eat.
If it was not… I would not.
I was breathing, but with short, shallow, quiet breaths punctuated with intermittent and deep gasps.
My heart beat, albeit faint.
When I spoke… it was without filter.
I smoked cigarettes all-the-time.
I disliked being indoors. It wasn’t just because of the smoking, it was a need to see sky to soothe the sensation of entrapment.
I was ushered through airports as if I was sleeping, as I put my body to ‘stand by’ and sealed myself off from all the activity intensified by confined space, blunting my senses.
I would sleep, eventually. Once I was sleeping… I resisted waking.
I soothed my heart with cognac and could feel it’s warmth coursing through my tract and into my blood, as it lit a secret burning thread within me.
I was aware of everything inside me and all else was distant, blurred and faint.
I lived within me and journaled what I observed there.

As months passed, I looked up to see the military-style organization required to mobilize the army of friends that moved me from pillar to post, and it disturbed me. So I found the ability to drive.
Driving brought me privacy and a way to stay within as I titrated interaction with the outside world.
Some days that interaction went well. Some days not.
I learned to function within a small rock pool, sheltered by my friends and family. My confidence grew brazen, but open water sometimes brought disaster.

Later, I appeared, and felt, I was doing well. But challenges beyond my established pattern, things I used to be able to do, brought confusion and frustration to my brain and transformed me into an ugly savage animal, hissing and snarling at my husband.
The mere memory of recalling that state brings anxiety as I sit here clenching my jaw and tightening my grip to white knuckles around my pencil.
I eventually revisited my walking coma to execute what I could not whilst lucid and all those challenges were met with ease and grace.
Liberating information I note to self as my subconscious writes and reminds me of that coping strategy, and my tension dissipates.

The drive to speak about what happened to Luke, to me, to my beautiful family, was always strong. It was there from the start. It was in my eulogy and all over my journal. It was in my earliest interactions. It was fierce, eloquent and full of love. I saw that it inspired others and that drove me forward to in my work with a propulsion that I did not have in my other self.

I used my sleep resistance to forge ahead with that work, that seemed to split the Sheilas in me. We were two people… the one with the drive to speak out and the crushed Mother without her child. The pain of the latter fueling the work of the former on an atomic scale, the drive for excellence unswerving.
One Sheila vectored and the other lost, was something I accepted as we found a way to live in harmony.
One fighting for change to prevent the pain of the other from happening to any more Mothers and using that broken Sheila for data whilst validating her pain.

Some days would be hard. Sadness would swell, become loud and bright. The function in me would break and I would fall, retreat into myself, into my coma, take to my bed and curl up small and weep. The emotion at full volume, in full focus, in full frame.
Some days the drive to find the words, to find the force for change would swell, become loud and bright. The function in me would rise and I would be surged ahead, researching voraciously, sitting in fancy meetings, holding the broken hearts of other Mothers, looking at what I can do.. and doing it. The drive to protect others at full volume, in full focus, in full frame.
Contraction and expansion, like a tree alternating between growing roots and branches, they support each other.

So what is happening now?
Why am I so adrift?
Good fucking question!

I am in a good state. My work is going well, better than in my wildest dreams. Luke at my side in our work.
Taking to my bed for days of weeping seems unhelpful.
Packing Narcan kits for the upcoming training seems too much.

I am guessing that I’ve lost my rhythm, my natural swing betwixt expansion and contraction and I am at an impasse.
The sadness and the drive, both at full volume, in full focus, in full frame. I am jammed.
I hate jammed. I always did.
It’s often the state from which I journal and I note that the jam is lifting as I write this distillation of my emotions.

Sheila, opposites can both be true.
You can be doing badly and doing well at the same time.
After all, whenever you functioned, you were always still sad because…. Luke was never undead. It’s what drives you.

It’s often said by those who travel this road, that we miss that early freeze state, when life was simpler and nothing was expected of us.
But when your child dies, the world does not actually stop, you just don’t notice anything beyond your coma.
As the veils of grief lift, one layer after the other, the challenges of every day life, that were always there, come back into view.

Everyone has bad days, even those who haven’t lost a child. We all want to escape sometimes.
We can cope with a headache OR walking with a tiny stone in our shoe, but the two together is intolerable.
Add a pandemic to that…BOOM!

For me, some days, life is all too much because on top of all that normal stuff, a whole half of me is missing my boy and that savage animal appears again.

The difference is, that now I know, that as long as I acknowledge what I feel, however uncomfortable that is, this dark cloud will pass and I will, as I have before, develop the emotional muscle to accommodate it all and find a way to go forward, fortified .

I did not always know that.
But at 1664 days, I do.

Hold on Sheila. Not too tight, don’t brace, just float in that safe and simpler coma state as you proceed in your function. Maybe you don’t need to choose a state, maybe you can do both.
Try it.
Maybe it’s not a zero sum game.
No need for that savage in you.
It’s not forever, it never is.
You are fully happy and fully sad... at the same time.
Both states bright and at full volume, fully in focus and full frame,
viewed through the joyous vision of Luke’s vibrant smile and the tears that will forever fall..

…and that is oddly, just as it should be.