come out of your cave

Grief: keen mental suffering or distress over affliction or loss; sharpsorrow; painful regret.

In the last couple of weeks I've had a lot of that. Grief. Keen mental, emotional suffering or distress over loss and painful regret [I don't think that I really believe in regret, but that's a whole other blog post.]

I've been extremely apathetic in one regard, and while that's super annoying it's allowed me to stay numb to a certain degree. [Huh. It has just occurred to me how odd it is that I would use words like "distress" and "painful" with something like "numb" in regards to the same situation. But that's all true. Weird.] Just as there began to be enough happening and visiting my daily life to distract me from that annoying numbness, the breath was knocked out of me by an almost 2 year old would. I didn't even know that it still hurt so badly. [yipes] Quick, somebody stitch that up.

Grief means something else to me now. As I was haphazardly talking through things with a dear friend, she reminded me that if anything was simple in all of this, it's the simple fact that I am dealing with a loss. In talking with her, I realized that I have lost greatly. I believe that the greatest losses come from the greatest loves - the things that require so much of you, and are so rewarding; full of delight and struggle and victory. Death is a terrible, awful thing. Losing someone is unimaginable. It's awful when a person dies & you have to live life without them.

It's worse when a person chooses to live their life without you.

I am a fighter. I am a strong, stubborn & prideful woman and in a delightfully difficult combination, I am crazy loyal. When I'm in - I'm in, whether you like it or not. I did once, and will never let anyone treat me like it's a crime to be that loyal ever again.

I will never, ever, ever give up. I will never want anything other than reconciliation and restoration. Regardless of what is said about any one's character, that's my goal. Always, always, always will be.  

I don't understand things; I don't know that I ever will. The silence drives me absolutely insane and it's the thing that in my most emotionally weak moments, causes my red hot anger to burn and drive me to that strong, loyal fight. I think a lot of it is stupid [right now. right now I think a lot of it is stupid, but I'll probably feel differently tomorrow]. I'll never understand how adults who hold the same Hope and the same Truth can exist in deathly silence. 

Maybe it's just the toll that time has taken. Maybe it's the red wine. I refuse to let this paralyze me. It's already stopped me dead in my tracks for six days; I'm not just going to melt and stay in a puddle anymore. 

I'm not a quiet girl. I never have been a quiet girl and I don't intend to start being one [I tried that once. For a boy. It didn't work out]. If my screaming and yelling and fighting bothers you, fine. Be bothered. I'm not sorry. 

I am sad. I am absolutely heart broken. I'm grieving a loss that has been hiding out for almost two years. But I'm not giving up. I will not quit fighting for the thing that has required so much of me and was so rewarding and delightful and hard and victorious.

And I'm not apologizing for that either. 

The Cave, Mumford and Sons