Season of Sorrow

July. For us, it's the preamble to the anniversary of the worst day of our lives. This is my season of sorrow. When all the cells in my body that remember her begin to tremble, and the places where my trauma is stored seize with the effort to hold onto it. A kind of transformation takes place. Not one that I want. Not one that I enjoy. But one I have come to accept, though not with much grace.

I don't actually like writing about this stuff. It makes me feel weak. It makes me feel crazy. It makes me feel out of control. But I figure another heartsick mom grieving a child might read this and feel just a little more tolerant of herself and her cycles in a way that I wish I could be. And if I can give that to someone else, it's worth it.

I don't actually approach July with the kind of awareness you'd think I'd have after eight years of missing her. I approach July as if it is any other month. As if I will function like I do on any other day. As if it is simply summer, and my biggest concerns are utility bills and keeping the grass from dying in the heat. I know the anniversary is there, looming, just on the other side. I know that and yet I still somehow think my July will be like everyone else's. That might be my biggest frustration of all. The selective amnesia I seem to get around these dates. The way in which I can't recall the specifics of how it was last summer or the one before. The expectation that I will know myself, be myself, for most of that month. As if the anniversary happens in a vacuum, as if my body doesn't know it's coming.

There is just a general understanding that I will lose time—that somewhere along the way I will cease to function normally, that it might get a little "hard". But I can never quite recall or imagine how much time will be lost, or when it will begin slipping, or where exactly it will go. That always comes as a surprise. What, now? We're going to start this now? And then there is a panic and a flurry inside me because despite my previous experience, I didn't anticipate this. I didn't prepare. I have things to do. Deadlines to meet. Responsibilities and obligations. And what follows is a lot of pushing and a lot of exhaustion and a lot of disappointing myself until I finally can't push anymore and I fold.

Because this is going to be so much more than a little "hard" or a little "sad". My thought patterns will shift dramatically and my brain and body will be hijacked. My mind will become a strange and lopsided place to be, a topsy-turvy funhouse of overlapping timelines and intrusive thoughts, repressed memories surfacing and very loose definitions of "reality". It will get increasingly difficult to dissociate in all the ways I'm used to, and yet I'll begin to dissociate in other ways that feel startling and new, beyond my control. I will work through the confusion and the tears for a while. I will work around them. I will push forward and develop little micro coping mechanisms that help and last for a week, for a day, for an hour. I will manage some semblance of normal living despite the interior roller coaster ride.

But eventually, all of my best efforts will fail me. And while the world around me looks the same, carries on as if this were only summer, expects me to carry on with it, I am lost. I am in full survival mode, treading the landscape of the dead, searching, searching... Always searching for her.

That's where I am now. I am writing to you from the land of the lost. Sending out a little postcard. Greetings from my broken heart! It's dark here and gloomy and full of strange happenings. I miss the sun and the feeling of connection.

This year, it started in June. As if my body were dreading not only the anniversary and the dreading of the anniversary, but the dreading of the dreading of the anniversary. Maybe it always starts in June. I genuinely couldn't tell you. Felt like a shock but then again, it always does. I'm sure once the anniversary passes and I start to feel human again, the goblins in my brain will pack all this away in the box labeled do not open, and I'll repeat the cycle next summer. Blissfully ignorant, optimistic, believing I've rounded some mythical corner only to find myself tossed into the deep, startled by the cold and treading water, grasping at one flotation device after another—work, books, wine, weed, shopping, old movies, planning vacations I'll never actually take, looking at houses I'll never buy or move to, starting hobbies I will give up in a month or two.

Until I can't work. Can't read. Can't watch. Until the wine tastes sour and the weed seems stale. Until the destinations and the houses begin to look alien and wrong, and the idea of going anywhere beyond my front door feels terrifying. Until the hobbies turn boring and meaningless, and everything ceases to have a point. And I can't even conceive of anything feeling good, being good. Because Evelyn is gone. And she's been gone. And everyone keeps breathing without her. And what the actual fuck?

I just want to scream at everyone and everything around me then, Stop! Stop breathing! Stop being! Don't you see this hole? This place where she was and isn't? This darkness left by the dimming of her light? I want to scream atoms apart and people into dust. I want to scream myself into the grave because how could I? How dare I draw breath when she can't.

I know that isn't rational. I know it's not even what Evelyn would want me to feel or think. But it is a very real part of this experience. The outrage. At death for stealing my baby out from under me. At the world for continuing to turn as if she never was. At myself for not going in her place. For daring to build a life that can contain my shattered pieces while I'm still here. No mother wants to indulge while their child goes without. And yet we do. I indulge in oxygen everyday. In gratitude. In love. In quiet and comfort and connection however I can. I want to believe that somewhere she's indulging too. And that's all I have to comfort myself with. The wanting. The believing. But it's never really enough.

I'm just a week out now. Just one more week of grueling, grinding, gutting existence. And then the day itself arrives, heavy and aching, dripping fresh blood. We move through it together, however we can. We form a little plan. We go through the motions. And then we wait for life to return to normal. I wish I could tell you when that happens. But the ending is much like the beginning—elusive and mysterious, cataloged away in a remote, guarded corner of my brain. I have every expectation that I will be right as rain come that following week. I'm sure that's balderdash. Another way I am setting myself up for failure. But we'll see. The truth is, I honestly don't know. I'm not sure I ever will.