Hello Grief,
It has been a while since we’ve sat together.
How are you?
You always seem to find me in weak moments and then hang around for a while.
Every so often you are about a specific thing but today you are a wave of several things.
Sometimes you come because I feel alone and start sitting with my thoughts for too long.
Sometimes I fail to keep my body busy enough to ignore you until I am better equipped to handle you.
Sometimes my anxiety and depression get the best of me and you arrive just in time for them to win.
Sometimes I really hate you.
But then, there’s times where I feel like you are just helping me to remember. Not that I could forget anything that has shattered my heart or made me cry until my face was hot and red and I could no longer catch my breath. There’s times when I welcome you, just to feel something other than inadequacy. There’s time where you replace anxiety but you fill it with longing and emptiness.
I cry for many could haves, would haves, should haves.
I wish for many of the same.
I wouldn’t be where or who I am today without them though.
You come in waves of a roller coaster. Soemtimes you are sitting in the cart next to me riding the ride of life. And then sometimes you are the ride, throwing me around without any real direction.
Tonight you brought with you: Morgan, Jessie, Grammy, my career, my failed applications, my missed opprotunities, my self doubt, poor body image, and resentment. I wish you would have left sooner than you did or at least closed the door when you left. You over stayed your welcome, once again.
I am tired of crying over things that are gone. I am tired. My eyes hurt, my head hurts, my heart hurts, my soul hurts, my nose is raw, my tummy aches. You mess me up every time you visit, but I am thankful for your visit.
To have you means to have love. Without you there isn’t love for what was. You break my heart while simultaneously heal it. I wish I didn’t have you because it means things would have been different. But at the same time knowing I can love as much as this that I shatter at your meer visit is encouraging.
I wish you would go, but I wish you would stay forever.
Love,
me
Hallie Dantzler 