Atalist's Dungeon

 I am not okay.  Let's start there.  Nothing about a close family member dying is okay. It is utter bullshit.  Objectively I understand that it is the plight of the human condition. I also understand that we make choices in life and those choices lead us down a path that we cannot un-walk. It is normative but at the same time, nothing about this feels normal. It feels broken.  Everything is broken. I am broken.  I get that grief is a process, hell I studied the Kubler-ross cycle in school and I wrote an emotional envelope about grief. I know quite a bit about the grief cycle but at the same time, it is different to go through it. It's different to know that it is coming.  I am not okay and nothing is okay, but maybe that in itself is okay. I have been learning that not being okay in this instance is normative and if you are okay there is something inherently wrong with you. I am trying, trying the best I can to manage all of this and I can't, I just ca...

 I feel nothing and everything all at once.  When someone receives terrible news there are multiple ways to take it... For me, I feel empty, like the air has gone out of the room. Colours are dull and faded and the only light left is fake. It is such a worldless feeling. Where nothing matters and every second slogs on and yet I feel everything, acutely.  I am being dragged through and my heart is not shattering because it is not made of glass, and yet... it is a heart. It beats and is material. It is soft and its purpose is to slog on. It feels like it has been removed from my chest and has been dragged on the floor. Full of slivers and lint and yet it still beats.  My children and my family are the reason it still beats. Not in a climactic sort of end it all if things are going poorly... that has never been me... but they are the beats that pull my heart to feel, to smile, and to know that the world is not entirely void of colour. They make me smile and pull me out ...

 I learned today from a very knowledgeable Reverand that screaming "fuck" out into the universe is a prayer. I did not know this. Having screamed this out into the universe multiple times this year, I truly feel it. I am trying, I really am. I am trying to hold it all together. To support my children, my family, my husband...and sometimes that means screaming, yelling, being frustrated and crying.  It means letting myself feel all the emotions and letting them wash over me. It means dealing with whatever anxiety and stressors I have.  my support group seems to have shrunk mostly because I cannot call on those people to be in my bubble right now... but are they gone? no. They are just tucked neatly away into their own bubble "praying" the same way I am.  Screaming fuck into the universe with all manner of zeal is religious experience. 

 I am exhausted.  Like many of you reading this, I have been rolling with the punches of covid restrictions and with the issues surrounding such an aggressive disease and I am tired. This has been grueling for all of us and I feel like we are doing the best we can. Some of us are so exhausted that we have given up the cause and are no longer restricting movement and gathering... I feel this. I miss people, and yet I know it is in the best interest of everyone not to gather. My mother is my main reason, but there are many. I don't know how long my mother has left, to be honest, no one knows how long they have... but having a brain tumor makes you think about these things. It is a fuck of a thing to deal with in the midst of a pandemic and all the while, the exhaustion with the rules and now helping my family go through the process of trying to radiate and shrink her tumor and fight for all the time we can muster is doubly exhausting. I will do it... but it is not the fight that...