One year

Dear friends and family,

I'm sorry about who I've been this last year. I know I've not been myself, but I'm not sure that person exists anymore. I'm sorry that I'm distracted and selfish. I'm sorry that I can't remember anything. I'm sorry that I just don't care that much about anything. I'm sorry that I'm overwhelmed and exhausted all the time. My exhaustion is exhausting, even for me. I'm sorry that I feel like I need to opt out of everything and guilty that I let you down when I do opt out.

My heart broke a year ago when I lost my mom, my best friend. It broke again when I lost my mother-in-law 5 months later in the same way, in the same room. This year has gone by in a blur and I don't really remember it. All I know is that everything is too heavy and social commitments seem like a lot.  Everything seems like a lot. Even putting away my clean socks. And yet I'm so so busy. Maybe to distract myself from the fact that everything is more grey now and the life we signed up for is gone, different.



A year has gone by. A year. I live in a different place. My sister has a new last name. But the weight of loss feels just as new. Just like yesterday and just like I've been carrying it for a hundred years. I'm a hundred years old, you just can't tell because it's on the inside where the hole that is mom-shaped lives.

Someone said to me when are you going to get over this prolonged grief response? I told them to fuck off, but only in my head. I told them that I will never get over this because she's never coming back. That I don't know how to situate myself in the world when I don't know where I belong anymore. How do I believe in myself when the person who believed that I could do or be anything is gone? How to I go about in the world acting normal when nothing is? When we've lost just the best person and all the traditions that she held for us. And all the littlest things that made us know that she was thinking of us and that she loved us. Who do I tell my day to day happenings to? They are little and pointless and only a mother would care. So I don't tell anyone, not even myself and that's how this year has passed and gone, my memory with it.

A year spent in a fog, with a heart that is crushed to pieces with a smile on my face because no one wants to hear it. They go to a funeral and then they go home. And we just go back with each other, each day feeling more panicked that today is the longest that we've ever gone without speaking to her.That today is another day and we don't know where to go.

Autumn is always been a dreadfully sad time. And now, I guess, it's for a reason that this season feels like.