whirring and spinning around me. Sometimes. . . .
So much has changed. It is a new year, February 6th, 2016, Saturday, and it has been forever and a day since I last blogged. Where did I go? Only into the recesses of myself in an effort and a fledgling attempt to rectify and redeem the dire straits I found myself in last year.
Losing a child to suicide necessarily carries with it the burden of loss, one heavy and weighted enough so as to encumber you for the rest of your life here. But there are many secondary losses as well. Over the past 3 and 1/2 years, I have lost those I counted as "friends," three jobs, my health to such extraordinary proportions that I had to have open heart surgery last fall, my financial status, my ability to function and move about as freely as I always have.
And the guilt. God the guilt, the mother lode of guilt, oozing and drenching all that I am and do in "what if's" and second doubts. Feelings I thought I'd left behind surface all over again and I find myself drowning in despair. And the really sad part of all this is that I'm not even entirely sure this is a guilt that can be avoided. If you've lost a child to suicide, then you are probably all too aware of this hellish familiar ache.
Some things never change:
1. my ache for my son
2. the many ways I think about him during my day
3. the way I just about always dream about Dylan at night
4. the way just about everybody in my community just doesn't "get" me--not unless, of course, they've lost a child too--and if they've lost a child to suicide too? then they "get" me
5. the way i slip further and further from my family network
6. my reclusiveness during "holidays"
7. my reluctance to commit to anything--and always holding back the option of bailing at the last minute
8. my not looking forward, save one day at a time--and realize, it's taken me 3 and 1/2 years to even get to this point
I have learned how to:
1. be a master of disguise
2. fake smiling
3. fake laughing
4. fake being "normal"
5. keep the focus on others to the effect that no one asks me about myself
I realize:
1. nobody really knows me anymore
2. I will always carry this deep ache and sorrow
3. my life is forever bittersweet
4. "it is what it is"
5. this is my "as is, as now"
6. I completely hate the term "new normal." There is no such thing.
7. I will always have to hide the completeness of who I am to fit in
8. just about everybody can't even imagine, let alone fathom, losing a child to suicide
9. I will never be "healed" until I see Dylan again.
10. It's been 3 and 1/2 years. I've learned to live here, or at least to breathe here, but my heart aches for my son. Mine is a hollow existence. I miss belonging to life, to being in the flow of activity, of sharing of lives, of being like others. I will never fit in again. I live "childless" here, having lost my only son to suicide, but I am forever a mom, forever Dylan's mom. 20 years here. and now? and now? God has held my son for 3 and 1/2 years.
11. My cat needs me
12. I still just want to be with Dylan.
My world is small. I am lonely. I miss my son.
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