Missing Catatonia

Day 726.

The Anniversary of my boy’s death looms.

It is dark in my soul. As I hear my own agonizing wailing in the therapy session, I am encouraged to let it all out. I have locked my back, neck and jaw, bracing to hold it all in. I’m afraid that if I let it all out - it will never end.

My words of anguish are released. Did I let Luke down? Why could I not save him? Why did he not reach out to me?

Fear of driving George away with my grief. I’m trapped between letting it out and keeping it all in. Trapped in perpetual agony.

Why can’t people see that I am lost in agony?

Why can’t I reach out and tell people?

I need help. I need a foot rub. I need company.

Trapped in my self-imprisoned role of pleasing others, unable to receive.

‘Reach out’ they say.... for what?

Invite people over …for what? To watch me sob? To run me a bath?

People are busy. People have their own stuff. To watch their exhausted faces as they wrangle to find free time, shift their schedules, get a babysitter, to freeze their asses off out here, whilst I smoke through my cough - No.

Grief is so complicated.

The exhaustion, the trauma of trying to navigate my life, is all upon me now.

The constant attempt to keep Luke safe and George too. I am undone.

I emailed back and forth today with a friend who lost two siblings. How his parents bore it without therapy, how it affected him, and how I cannot protect George from that pain.

A mother in hell. One child dead, the other suffering in his loss, and my own position in all this? How can I do it all? How can I stand on my left foot and on my right foot simultaneously?

Almost two years on and the good news is - I got my feelings back.

The bad news is - I got my feelings back.

This is so much more complicated than that catatonic state of the first year.