I’ve got a prompt sitting in my unused prompts folder that’s actually one I’d done before (and was sent out again), asking me to check in on the condition of my heart. Last time I wrote about my heart as a tree that had been struck by lightening and needed some care. But right now, on this day, my heart is weary.
My heart feels like it is waterlogged, soaked in my tears that just keep flowing, every day. Things have been harder lately. I’m not quite sure why – is it the social-distancing/home isolation? The fact that we’ve hit the anniversary of when all this began last year? The 6 month anniversary of Sara’s death? All of the above? Revisiting my heart-tree, it is currently partially submerged in a flood of water, with thunderclouds overhead and no break to the storm in sight.
I think that 6 months in, my heart is absorbing what it means to have to live with this grief for the rest of my life, and that is just so overwhelming.
I’m so tired, and I’m so, so tired of being sad.
I’m tired of having to quickly decide how to answer, every time someone asks me how I’m doing. I realized I’ve been telling people that “I’m doing okay, all things considering” as my general answer the last few months – while I guess it’s sort of true – I’m functioning, getting my work done for the most part, keeping my pets cared for, keeping my living space tended to… I’m really not particularly okay. But I’m afraid – do people judge me for still being so sad? Am I coming off like a broken record? Am I annoying? Should I be bouncing back by now?
My grief is there – always, but then there’s also this other layer – figuring out how to navigate the world with my grief. 6 months in, and I feel just as clueless as I did when Sara died. If anything, it feels more difficult the longer out I go, because I suspect there’s some expectation that eventually I’m supposed to get “better”. I don’t know what that means, or what it is supposed to look like, but there’s nothing in the world that can fix this.
I watch the spring growth happening outside – the green showing up on the trees and the bushes, the little purple flowers that sprout up all over our yard, the birds that flit about and sing such beautiful songs… and I’m envious. I am shrouded in the heavy weight of my grief, which feels like the opposite of what I’m seeing happen out in the world around me.
The condition of my heart right now is weary, sad, and tender. Lately I feel a bit like Sisyphus, having to roll my heavy boulder of grief up the hill over and over and over again, without relief.