June 6th, 2023

And also, grief is so weird.

I just sat in my driveway and typed a message to a sweet friend who has been a wonderful encouragement to me over the last few weeks. I had just gotten home from the grocery store and remembered I had read her message in the store but I couldn’t reply then (I was trying to focus on not forgetting anything, spoiler alert – I still did).

Anyway, I remembered she had messaged me and didn’t want to forget so I grabbed my phone and typed the message to her before I got out. I felt good writing it because it was about how I felt sparks of joy today. I spent time with my mother-in-law and father-in-law. My mother-in-love and I laughed kind of hard at something we said about Scott. It felt good to be able to do that. And the blessing at the funeral home that I reported on earlier gave me joy, not just because of the money and not needing to use what money I had to pay that bill, but because of the provision. I felt thankful. Blessed.

Then I got out and started unloading groceries and suddenly thought that I should ask Scott to help me with the heavy stuff. (Funny thing is that he hasn’t been able to lift heavy stuff for awhile because of his neck injury but it was a habit spoken to my brain from prior to that.) And then I realized he would never come help me unload groceries ever again. Ever. My boys offer to help anytime they are here and I have unloaded groceries a million times myself when he wasn’t here so it’s not that I’m incapable. It’s that now HE is. And it’s forever. And so there I go, right down the spiral staircase again, bouncing on my head, my butt, my elbow, my knees…just a thrashing, crashing, breaking descent. Right to what feels like the bottom again.

I’ve pulled it together again now, and put away the groceries with my breath still hitching. Now I am back to say how crazy this “thing” called grief is. How it feels like being bipolar: feeling happy and then devastatingly sorrowful and broken just afterwards, swinging like a giant pendulum from one to the other with no warning. Funny thing about a pendulum: you always know that once it swings one way, it’s gonna go back the other.

I like having moments where I’m not feeling such despair constantly but I don’t know if I do like it when it becomes just the ascending part of a roller coaster. Would I rather be sad all of the time? Or is it better to still feel kind of happy sometimes, knowing I may crash and burn again at any minute? Always being on the alert for that? Right now, I just don’t know.

This is yet another part of my journey that I know 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘰𝘯𝘦 needs to hear, to know they’re NOT bipolar. To know it is “normal” for this season. And that it’s okay to 100% hate that “normal”… 😢