Learning to live again in a world that doesn't seem to fit

“Grief is a house, where the chairs, have forgotten how to hold us, the mirrors how to reflect us, the walls how to contain us.

Grief is a house that disappears each time someone knocks at the door or rings the bell.

A house that blows into the air at the slightest gust, that buries itself deep in the ground while everyone is sleeping.

Grief is a house where no one can protect you, where the younger sister will grow older than the older one, where the doors no longer let you in,

or out”

―Jandy Nelson,The Sky Is Everywhere

I saw this poem the other day from the novel, 'The Sky is Everywhere' and it really resonated with me. Especially as in the last few weeks I've attempted to re-enter the work space.

I work casually at the moment and I work amongst young people which means that on any given day, I can receive a call to ask if I can come in. The job requires you to have a level of confidence, an air of leadership and it requires you to care for others.

I have been back, twice, and I 'survived,' but I felt like I wanted to blurr into the background. I walked the familiar areas but didn't want to be noticed. I plastered a smile on my face but it felt so fake. I just felt changed. And so last night, I received a call to come in to work. I was available and the people pleaser in me said, 'yes.' Then an anxiousness crept in. That told me I didn't belong in that space anymore and perhaps I don't. So, embarrassed in myself, I messaged to say, actually, I've changed my mind. I don't think I am ready. Perhaps I just need more time but I questioned, if that's not me anymore, than who am I?

That's the thing about grief that I'm only starting to holistically grasp now. I noticed patterns of it, when my relationship with my husband, and to extent even my daughter, began to falter. But 'the thing' about grief is that it doesn't just take your loved one away from you. It shifts your whole world. I feel as if I'm a different person standing in what was once a familiar place. I go to the same shops, I see the same people, go to the same playgroups and mum groups, have been back to the same job, live in the same house, have almost the same daily routine and yet, it feels so different. Not just different, no, removed. As if I go to sit in a chair, that I've sat in everyday and so I sit, without looking, and someone's moved it.

And grief is a house, that disappears when someone knocks at the door. I go out and I'll smile. People will say, "how are you?" not in are "how ARE you?" kind of way but in a routine greeting and I'll respond with a smile, "good, thanks" because it's either that or this; an absolute blurt of the soul. You can't neatly define grief in one response. Yet, everytime I say it, I feel like a fraud.

If I look back at where I was in the weeks after Charlie's death, I couldn't even leave the house, let alone speak to people. So I do notice the immense progress that I've made but I think that whilst that progress 'fits' more into society, I am beginning to feel that I don't fit anymore. I feel left without a map, in an unknown land.

I found a photo on my camera roll the other day, that I took on my first night alone in the maternity ward, once I'd been transferred to the city hospital. I took it so that one day I could look back on that photo and see how far I'd come. My face is incomprehensibly sad. My body had just given birth and I'm wearing a massive maternity pad. I look lined, wearied.

I also found a photo that was taken the morning before my wedding. Given, these two pictures are extreme examples of my realities. I'm wearing a huge smile, half tucked over, sitting on the side of the bed in my bra and undies. I look healthy, glowing. These two photos highlight to me, how I've shifted. In my outward appearance, yes, but also in the way I see the world. Somewhere, somehow, I've lost that confidence in myself and in the world around me. I see it as shifting now, inconstant and I feel as if I'm just floating, untethered waiting for the world to do what it will with me.

Grief isn't just the loss of Charlie. I miss him every minute of every day, I do. It's the loss of the world that I lived in. I'm here, everything goes on as if nothing's changed. (Gosh, I've even had family members tell me that nothing's changed for them but that's for another post). And yet, everything has changed because the way I see the world, others and myself has been overhauled. I grieve that. I miss Charlie but I miss the old me. The one that had an optimism about her, the one that saw the good in others first up, the one that had a sense of confidence and knew a direction she was going, the one that wasn't so wearied and aged by traumatising memories.

Whist I don't think we ever 'know' who we are, even without loss, I feel as if the woman I was before would be happy replying, 'good, thanks,' she would sit in the chair, that was always there, and it would be there. She would be able to talk to people down the street without picking up on the glances that suggest, 'I know, I just don't want to say anything.' It's the unspoken. It's in every second, of every day and some days, I just wish the world would stop spinning so I could hop off for a second; the door on my house of grief would open, so I could go out for a bit.