grief | SavvySpoons

They say the first year of loss is the hardest.

I wouldn’t know, I haven’t made it through the first year. All I can say for certain is that I am still struggling to breathe.

It’s Father’s Day on Sunday and for the first time in my life I will not be writing a poem or baking a cake or choosing a new shirt for the man who gave me everything.

Instead I will be trying to breathe. Trying to force enough air into my lungs to replace the overwhelming need to cry until they give out.

I don’t know where I will be Sunday. Maybe I will be well enough emotionally to visit the bench we dedicated to him at Duck Lake. Maybe I will find solace in cleaning his work room some more, running my hands over the tools he used over and over during his life. Maybe I will be in bed refusing to get up so I don’t have to face my first Father’s Day without my Dad.

All I know is this is still awful, I still hate it, and I’m not going to like it anytime soon.

Feeling a bit overwhelmed…

It just feels as though every day I am surrounded by red hot pokers.

People I love are struggling. Thinking about the reasons for the their struggles makes me scramble back to distraction or anything else because otherwise I want to cry because someone is sick or because their choices are making them sick or because their mental health is really bad and there isn’t anything I can do to help.

People I love are hating. They are choosing to be mean and hateful and go out of their way to hurt people they don’t even know for reasons I can’t understand.

My country is fading. The heroic Captain America U.S. I grew up with is looking more and more like something Indiana Jones would fight against. Something the Avengers would defeat. Something we used to stand against.

Everywhere I turn there are burning, searing, painful places screaming for me to deal with them. All I can do is cower in the center of the flames.