alone.

[mellybelly]

i know this whole site is dedicated to the thought that we are indeed, not alone. but i think i'm pretty much reaching my lowest point ever and i can't help but feel, yes we are alone. it has been one month since i lost my boyfriend...i just don't have a grasp on what this so called life is all about anymore. i hate existing in my little world without him. i'm not the same person anymore and i hate this. i used to feel as if, wow life is so short...seize the day! now i feel like each day is just a dragging ticking away of the minutes and i struggle to find the littlest bit of motivation. oh, i've been keeping it together pretty well for everyone else...showering, eating, conversing with my friends and family, but it's exhausting...i feel like i'm going through the motions...and for what.....

 

the saddest part is that i know i'm blessed to no end, even without michael...i have a wonderful family, amazing friends, i'm not starving, i have a roof over my head...i can enjoy luxuries if i wish...i feel like a spoiled brat when i think of people in poverty ridden and war-stricken countries, whose loved ones are dying all around them, they have hardly any food and hardly any means to survive....i know i don't have it the worst...but i can't change how i feel. i can't change this emptiness inside me. i can't change the fact that i found true, ultimate happiness with michael...and now it's gone. i can't change it. i'm trapped. i just don't know what to do. i just want to be with him and i can't. sometimes i feel his presense...and then other times i get so afraid that i will not see him again....it terrifies me. i just feel lost. and being lost isn't even always that bad; but being alone, and lost...how do i survive?

[onewithbooks]

Welcome to ENA Melly!

 

I am sorry you have lost your Michael. I can not imagine what you are going through right now. I will say this though, its only been a month. You are still greiving, and that is ok. What you are feeling right now doesnt feel ok, but you are in a process of healing even if it doesnt feel that way.

 

The whole going through the motions - autopilot, that is our way of coping. Its our way of getting us through one more day to put time inbetween our hearts and tragedy. The reason that you are going through this is so that one day you will be more healed than you are now, even if you cant imagine feeling so.

 

To know you are blessed is a good thing. To be able to appreciate what you have is a good thing. That doesnt mean we can shut off the hurt we have and the thoughts that go through our mind.

 

You asked "how do i survive"? The answer is you are surviving. Going through the motions and the emotions, that is surviving. Take this time to mourn your loss. Journal your thoughts and your unanswered questions. You will make it through this. You just have to take it one breath at a time.

[tiredofvampires]

I think the very worst thing about grief is that you get to this point where you are struck with the coldest existential truth which holds true for every single person, which normally can be submerged or simply avoided in usual, everyday life: that our own experience is ultimately only our own. We can talk about it with someone, someone who is on the outside looking in, with varying degrees of being able to relate, depending on what life circumstances they have encountered. We can share our tears on the shoulders of those who care and love us. People can hear our stories, with patience and concern and a wish to lift the burden from us again and again...but in the end, it's our own heart to have to return to, to confront what is going on in it. No one can go to the core of it but us. No one can give back to us what was taken. No one can make the broken pieces mend...not even us -- at least, not for a long time, anyway. Not through our willing it, certainly, not through wanting the pain to be gone. And that's what's so terrifying -- to feel that no one can crawl into our soul to be there with us during such a storm. And that when we are in an undistracted state of full awareness of this loss, it's just too big for anything we have ever fallen back on for perspective and comfort.

 

And of course, Michael was the person who would have been the closest to crawling into your soul to share a difficult emotion, if you needed to be held by someone in that very intimate place. Now, anyone in your situation would feel like that very resource, that nearest sense of being connected and linked, has been taken. Where do you go and how do you go when the very person who has shielded you in your challenges with life is no longer there to deal with THIS? How could that NOT make someone desperate and terrified!

 

So yes, this takes a person to a place that most people don't have to face at such a young age, unless there are some very dramatic less-travelled paths in their destiny -- this place being, we are all ultimately alone in some crucial ways on our journey and no matter how close another person is, no matter who they are and how much we've become interwoven with them, exchanging life energy...no matter how much we are changed by and transformed and touched and molded by other people, our own minds and hearts have a place where only we are, by ourselves, to do the reckoning of it all.

 

So a paradox is going on: we are not the same person because of those that touch us or influence our lives. So you are always going to embody Michael within you, you are infused with him and that's never going to be taken out, even as more layers are folded into the mix in your life. On the other hand, there is something about our coming into the world and being severed to breathe on our own, and something about our departure that is clearly our own to do. That is the aloneness I am speaking about. And that's what being wrenched from another person all brings up. And in between the sharp end points of existence (birth and death) we find all kinds of meaningful and powerful unions with others that help us feel we aren't just separate entities here. But that solo aspect of the journey is still there, quietly humming in the background. If we are lucky, it won't be punched into the middle of the stage where we have to face it so squarely, but...when something like this happens, there is no choice but to see that aspect of reality. It's so painful. So this paradox of being separate yet being connected now just feels so flip-floppy, whereas before we had the comfort of not feeling that separateness. Losing someone like this brings us nose to nose with the realization that there is such a fine line between separation and fusion. That line is really a spider web, strong but also fragile at the same time. And having to realize that kicks out all the things to rely on from underneath you. It's a total freefall.

 

I know that the first thing I think of when things get bad is how much worse others have it -- the famine, the poverty, the catastrophic losses that can happen on this planet. And you know, it's a very healthy and good sign that you can have this perspective at your worst moments, believe it or not!! Even though it doesn't make the pain any less, it's still not at all to be dismissed as pointless that you are able to have gratitude and a sense of relative proportion in the world. Gratitude is a very underemphasized emotion in my opinion...it is greatly sobering and more than that, healing when you turn your mind to the good things you do have.

 

BUT -- ! the problem is that feeling alone (that is, abandoned) in this world, in my opinion, is just about the WORST feeling a person can have. Not having enough food to eat is a terrible problem...but when the spirit feels starved, there is no comparing which is worse. So don't ask yourself to feel better just because others have it "worse." Their struggles do not make Michael's being gone more tolerable for you. There's no correlation. So honor your feelings, don't try to minimize anything. Writer Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist who survived the Holocaust and wrote a book called, "Man's Search for Meaning" explained it really well. Suffering, he said, is like a gas -- in that, it will fill any container to its full capacity, no matter what the size of that container. Whether it's a big or small container, that suffering, like a gas in a chamber, will spread out to fill it entirely. So what this boils down to is that your suffering is YOUR suffering, and it's all-consuming, and the last thing you need is to feel guilty about the nature or intensity of it.

 

Surviving this is going to be about not trying to imagine what life will be like without him up the road, but rather keeping your eyes on the daily steps and daily grief you are up against. When you find yourself extending the reach of this loss into the years to come, it's such a devastating thing, that you have to just bring your focus and attention back to your very moment, RIGHT NOW. Are you surviving this minute? Good, that is one more minute survived. How about this minute? One more survived. One more day? One more, done. That is really all you have to do now, and you are doing that already! There is no magic secret to getting through this...or making each moment hurt less...but it is by each stitch that you survive. Make the task deliberately as small as you can make it.

 

You only need to survive a minute at a time to survive.

 

And you don't have to worry about when surviving starts to feel like living again.

 

You are even doing great to keep up with the exhausting attempts at your daily maintenance. Some people can't even do that much, understandably! Small things are big victories now, so congratulate yourself. Congratulate yourself for the small things you do. So if you are exhausted, just know it's because you are doing the hard work of surviving the moments.

 

And also know that your feeling his presense means that you are still very much connected to him...and he is, to you. It's not going to be a steady stream of sensation, so in the times when you feel cut off and scared...bring your awareness to your own heart and just love it like he would, and like you would love his, reminding yourself that YOU are still here for yourself. I know that sounds so weird and a bit empty, but this is an opportunity to fill up with the knowledge that we have at least one person who understands this COMPLETELY, TO THE CORE and can be there for us constantly -- and that, crazy as it sounds, is US. Direct some of that love you feel has no where to go now back into yourself, where it's needed now! You have more than an abundance for both of you.

 

I'm so glad you have such a great support system with family and friends! Keep taking full advantage of those!

 

And keep posting here, as much as you can!! Let us know the updates, ups and downs, for encouragement along the way. There are some wonderful people in this forum who have gone through this, too, and there are many big souls on this site.

 

I'm keeping you in my thoughts!!

 

((hugs))

[GerBear]

These are things I've put together for myself and are on my fridg. Forgive me if they don't apply for you but they may help.

 

I have the right to be loved freely without having to work for it or prove myself or establish myself as worthy in someone else's eyes. I am loveable just by the virtue that I exist.

 

To be alone is a state of being but loneliness is just a feeling and not real.

 

A person that loves me does not withhold from me.

 

The five things that each human, by virtue of existing, has the right to and needs.

Air,Water,Sunshine,Kindness,Love

 

The Four things that each human, by virtue of existing, has a right to expect from other free humans.

Truth,Honesty,Respect,Commitment

 

In sharing the journey of life, travel with the humble person on the quiet path.

[Dagless]

Don't beat yourself up for how you feel. The emotions you are feeling are bad enough with out feeling bad about feeling them. It is ok to feel the way you feel just keep telling yourself that.

It's good that you are looking after yourself, showering and eating. It's important to just do these things just to keep yourself ticking over.

I too would feel bad after talking to friends, almost putting on an act for them just to let them know I was ok. I kind of thought of it as a mask I had to wear to let people know I was ok but I would do all my grieving in private. The truth was I was pretty far from ok, the world seemed very dark and almost claustrophobic. I would very rarely cry in front of anyone.

 

You're right, you can't change it. You can't change how you feel, grief is like love you can't simply switch it off. It doesn't listen to reason, you can't think your way out of it. All you can do is feel it and live through it.

 

For what is not a question but a lesson learned in time. Years from now you will look back and you will know why but right now all you can do is get through the days, one day at a time.

 

Grief is something we have to do our own way, it is something which is personal and yes it does feel lonely, no-one can feel what you feel but if we stand alone then we stand alone together.

[KG]

MB,

I have been where you are right now...as has Dagless. It seems so impossible for that person not to be there, almost surreal...yes. You are experiencing a wide range of emotions, a rollercoaster. But allow yourself to grieve...it's human, normal and healthy. Tho I must add that there is no normal, everyone is diffrent.

I don't even remember the first 2 months after my wife died...it was all a blur. Like the walking wounded, we get on some sort of autopilot, while our brains and heart try to figure out how to function.

Survive you will...though it will take a bit to make you believe that. But we will be here to help in any way we can....it's what we do, for those we care about. You are NOT ALONE. Vent. Rage. Cry. Scream.....We've all done it, and are still here, tho with some pieces missing.

Wishing you the best, right now, in this terrible state you are in...but let us help you.

Your friend...

KG

[mellybelly]

 

You asked "how do i survive"? The answer is you are surviving. Going through the motions and the emotions, that is surviving. Take this time to mourn your loss. Journal your thoughts and your unanswered questions. You will make it through this. You just have to take it one breath at a time.

 

thank you onewithbooks!

one breath at time...

so true...that's all i feel i can manage at times. i just worry about how the way i'm grieving is affecting everyone i love..i'm so empty right now, and i have always been a ray of light for other people, and i know it worries people to see me so...gone. i think my parents are pretty much heartbroken about it...i'm just waiting for people to say snap out of it. i haven't gone back to work yet, and i know i have to...but it gives me such anxiety. my regular routine is so tied to michael...i feel as if i will lose it when i get back to the regular routine, without him in it...it doesn't feel right. none of it feels right. i just hate having to make other people suffer because of me, and i feel like if i don't get it together i'm letting so many people down...but at the same time, i just don't care about myself at all right now. this is hard...

[Stars_n_Guitars]

Melly,

This is YOUR time. stop worrying about how your grieving will affect others. All that is doing is making you feel guilt for mourning Michael. How are you grieving him any differently than others that have lost someone they loved so deeply and truly? I can imagine how hard this must be, but to get back into the routines of things won't mean you don't love and think about Michael any less. And I'm sure it will be a million times harder when your life goes on without him. Again melly, this breaks my heart! I'm sure if I was your friend or family, I would have no problem letting you take out your pain on me in any way possible. Don't worry about crying in front of them. Don't worry about breaking down out of nowhere! I would hope they would understand! Just cry girl! Cry it out! take a day by yourself, if you haven't already, and just lay in bed all day, holding things that remind you of michael and cry, scream, anything and everything to get this emotion you are holding in-OUT! I hope this helps! Keep writting on ENA Melly, we are all here for you, Listening.

M

[mellybelly]

you said so many beautiful things t.o.v....you have an amzing perspective on life. so funny that you mention this, "And of course, Michael was the person who would have been the closest to crawling into your soul to share a difficult emotion, if you needed to be held by someone in that very intimate place. " because sometimes he would say, while we were laying around together in our own little world, "oh it hurts....i just want to crawl all the way in to your soul! my soul wants to jump in to yours..." and that is how i felt too but couldn't put it into words, he was so much better at putting words to feelings i felt like i couldn't explain...and these are the reasons i know we shared something more important, the most valuable bond possible...our souls literally touched and partly fused together...and that's what makes losing him so hard. i feel such a void now.

 

and you are right...it is true that our experience is our own and even though we share it with others, no one else can completely feel or understand our own. it's a strange thing honestly. before i met michael, i was actually going through a really rough, dark time in my life...my first real relationship with my so called "first love" was with someone i met at college. he was indian, and after he graduated, he was going to be going back to india. which i knew...but we ended up dating for almost 2 years anyways while he was here...it was heart breaking after he left..but we kept it long distance(opposite sides of the world...definitely BOLDS the long distance thing), and i went to visit him in india that christmas break...it was a crazy experience, but by the end of the trip, i knew it was over...i knew he had chosen his family and culture over me. after this point, and i actually had been battling for a couple years, but this was the breaking point, i did realize the nature of being alone. during my relationship with him, it did hurt because as much as i would deny it, i knew we were not connected on as deep as a level as my soul was longing for...so then when i got back to the states...i went into wild child mode and kind of had a down spiral...i was longing so much to be connected in a way that would erase the sense of being so alone...i went to as many parties as i could...surrounded myself by people all the time, had the most drinking binges ever in my life...it was so unhealthy and of course it didn't feel the void and made me feel that much more alone. then fastforward to the summer...i met michael through some other new friends. right off the bat i thought he was amazing...first of all he was the only one not drinking out of the circle of friends, which i thought was refreshing...we had long conversations...and the reason he wasn't drinking was because he wanted to be himself truly, after years of young drinking all the time. by this time i had already begun to hate my out of control actions, and he was so inspiring. such a beautiful person...we had the most meaningful conversations out of all the tons of people i was surrounding myself with. at the end of that summer...we started a band with another girl. truthfully, i always loved michael and who he was...but this time, i wasn't looking for that relationship person as i had in the past...we became such great friends, and i just didn't let myself think that way...then after months after spending so much time together, it was just kind of like BAM...we both fell for eachother, and it was as if it had been there all along...like, "why didn't we take full advantage of this amazing connection earlier??" already, during our friendship, we had bonded so deeply...there was just such an understanding, he had already begun to fill the void i was so desperately trying to fill...he definitely saved me from what i think was a definite downward spiral...i was searching for something to fill the emptiness, and he did...

well..there is the actually really abbreiviated version of how we were brought together...i could go on and on about us! and i am so thankful for even having had him my life at all...i'm so grateful we found eachother...i wouldn't change a thing...but it hurts to have him gone!! we were ripped apart from eachother...and i feel as if my soul will always be trying to make it's way back to his in some way... this life is so strange...i look around at some of the people that are together, and i think, they don't treat eachother a tenth of how special michael and i treated one another!! what is wrong with people?? and why are those people allowed to be with one another for years and years...i know it's a horrible way to think, and i've always been such a positive person, but life is unfair and it's just brutally smacking me in the face...i guess i'm just trying to find answers...desperately.

 

i do really appreciate your response t.o.v. it's very insightful...and i do realize that i am the only one who can truly pull myself through this. i do also know that i will always be connected to michael...but my "humaness" gets in the way so much and makes me doubt sometimes...and i hate that. this has definitely been a spiritual wake up call.

[mellybelly]

thank you dagless...it's refreshing to see your progress, i have read some of your earlier posts, and was right there with you with what i am dealing with now...it's just so unfortunate that some of us are dealt these cards.....

[mellybelly]

thank you KG!! it really means a lot. like dagless, you are inspiring as well...i hate that there are those who have gone through this horrible loss as well...but at the same time it does make me feel like a chance of getting through when i see the progress of you guys, and it does make me feel less alone in a way. i just wish we could all live out our lives with our mates until we are good and wrinkly old! life...why can't it be like that for everyone.

[mellybelly]

These are things I've put together for myself and are on my fridg. Forgive me if they don't apply for you but they may help.

 

I have the right to be loved freely without having to work for it or prove myself or establish myself as worthy in someone else's eyes. I am loveable just by the virtue that I exist.

 

To be alone is a state of being but loneliness is just a feeling and not real.

 

A person that loves me does not withhold from me.

 

The five things that each human, by virtue of existing, has the right to and needs.

Air,Water,Sunshine,Kindness,Love

 

The Four things that each human, by virtue of existing, has a right to expect from other free humans.

Truth,Honesty,Respect,Commitment

 

In sharing the journey of life, travel with the humble person on the quiet path.

 

thanks gerbear. those are some beautiful quotes.

[mellybelly]

M- thank you dearly.

I don't know why I feel I have to keep it in, but I do...I have always been a private person when it comes to dealing with my emotions, and this is so hard, because I have to deal with this every single moment...I can't hide it, I can't run away from it. BUT I do hold back on being the complete crazy person I feel like inside...at least when I am with others. There have been times when I have just cried out while I am in my car driving alone...just started absolutely shouting....and of course there are the times tears just start silently streaming down my face when i am with others. but i am holding back so much...because it is so personal...everyone knows what i am going through, it's like i might as well have a sign on my forehead saying i am plagued...I almost want to scrawl accross my face, "No, I'm not okay."

[tiredofvampires]

I'm so glad that some of what I had to say "got in" at all...because you know, the truth of it is that no matter how many expansive philosophical concepts and grand theories about souls, the universe, our little mortal lives, life and death, eternity vs. the finite naturally come up...there is still that "humaness" that overrides everything, as you say. I wouldn't say it "gets in the way", but I totally know what you mean by that. You seem like someone with great depth and ability to perceive and fill yourself with life, and it's starting to become my tentative theory that the more a person is capable of feeling, the more their spirit seeks to attain, the more of EVERYTHING they are going to get -- including sorrow. I used to scorn the saying, "God wouldn't give you something you can't handle", partly because...well, I myself am not sure what "God" is (that's just me personally, even though I feel more and more open and friendly to various intepretations of the concept)...and then also, then how do you account for the people who couldn't "handle it", and checked out or followed some decrepit path...but mostly because why would a mighty, divine being DELIBERATELY give us things to "handle" that hurt so much, especially if we deserve so much good? The people that are strongest in character, who are the noblest, who have the MOST to give others from a well of generosity and selflessness again and again seem mysteriously to be the ones to have to inspire the world with stories of loss, of heartbreak and dark nights of the soul, sometimes narrowly escaping death. Why does this happen? I don't have an answer any more than you...but I am searching as well. Because as you say, things like these are "spiritual wake-up calls". These kinds of life-changing events DO ask us to ask the BIGGEST questions there are! Not that anyone deserves such a wake-up, to be woken up like this -- but it has arrived anyway. So what a huge connundrum. And then I have to re-examine what that means about being "given something we can handle"...is it possible that this was part of a "teaching" that we can only know much, much later anything about? (More about "teachings" in a bit.) Life is SO mysterious -- the same mysterious forces that connected you with your soulmate out of the millions of guys out there are the same forces that have taken him without any explanation. And one can try to wrack their brains to figure this out...but in the end, there is your beating heart that just hurts in your chest, there is the reality of the empty space, and all the theories dissolve into pure feelings. By all means, as KG, Dagless and others have said, BE human!!! There is a time to try to grasp what has happened in a cosmic sense, and there is a time just to cry your lungs out until you can't breathe anymore.

 

The reason I said what I did about "crawling into your soul" is because I've had this kind of love before. I know how that feels. And while I believe there's going to be something EVEN bigger (maybe? who knows) for me to share this feeling again with, with a beloved, I have and DO feel love like this. Which is exactly what chokes me up so much about your story, and the stories of those who have lost their soulmates here. I relate to that kind of love, and wanting to crawl into someone's soul. I think it's the flip side of grief: love, as an experience that makes you feel inseparable from a person in body and soul, also makes for a grief that is such a void, it feels desperately solitary, as an experience. My heart aches for your loss! And to relate it to this:

 

.. this life is so strange...i look around at some of the people that are together, and i think, they don't treat eachother a tenth of how special michael and i treated one another!! what is wrong with people?? and why are those people allowed to be with one another for years and years...i know it's a horrible way to think, and i've always been such a positive person, but life is unfair and it's just brutally smacking me in the face...

 

I share your anger about this! You know, when I came to eNA, it was because 2 years ago (almost exactly to this date), my boyfriend severed all ties with me, in rage at me. I was in shock, because this was someone who I'd met at a time when I felt everything was finally going to line up for me, and after all the previous losses in my life, he was going to be the reward for my patience and perseverance through storms. He even told me, when we were getting to know eachother (which should have started as friendship, like you and Michael, as I was trying to establish it with him...the flaw which I believe was the crux of its demise), he told me that when he was born (5 years before me), his soul was waiting for me to arrive here on this earth; that I cleansed his every black tear; that my love made everything else he'd gone through mean something. I thought Oh My Gosh, this is IT! And then...I won't go into all that now, but suffice to say that many of his demons started to come out, and they were all directed at me. I went from the highest peak to the lowest hell, and felt so shattered at the loss of this "soulmate" that I didn't think I could go on anymore, hoping. And I found myself at the stoop of eNA, in the Healing from Breakup and Divorce forum. I stayed there for months and months, and developed my earliest friendships on here, there. We were the walking dead, going through all the same symptoms: physical decline, loss of appetite, feeling desperate and caged, isolated, even suicidal (some there.) We all agreed that our friends could no longer be burdened with these feelings, because they all just wanted us to "snap out of it already." They just didn't understand our process, how long it was taking, all the dead ends and regressions. The world by and large has so little patience for the process of a griefstricken heart. But WE did. All the "phases of grief" -- denial, depression, anger, bargaining were there to see in others (as well as those farther down the line who had come to a peace and acceptance of what happened.) And so we were comrades along the way.

 

As the months went by and more and more distance elapsed for me, I started to peek my head out into other forums. My "home" forum was the Healing Breakup one, but I did venture out, and eventually I saw less and less of my "home forum." I started to extend the reach of my advice to others in completely different situations, and saw that this whole board in a way is a testament to the pain of the human condition in all its facets. None here are spared their own brand of suffering. But nothing has rivalled the pain I've felt and dealt with once I started reading, posting and knowing the people who are here, in the Grief forum. This is a unique forum on this board, and I'll tell you why: because, unlike the other forums, the people here have such a very, very special and unparalleled love that it is the stuff of which everyone else is trying to find but can't. One only needs to compare the number of new threads and posts in Healing Breakup, or some other relationship forum to the thread in Grief to see how much mileage misery has in those other relationships. The sadness here is not about angry, abusive, hurtful "love" gone wrong; it's about the best of human experience. And how that has been so painfully ripped up with someone's departure. I tell you, as much pain as I have read in my "home" forum, those stories do not make me weep -- these stories do, again and again. I only rarely even look in my home forum anymore, partly because it's not relevant to me now, anymore...but partly because it just SICKENS me what parades out there for love. This is not to say that there aren't good people there, who did/do have worthy relationships, this is not to paint everyone there as defective because there are some great folks there...but it just curdles me inside to think that people fall apart or stop loving eachother in so many ways, and the ways we hear of people treating eachother...and that the ones who do see themselves together for an eternity, who have that elusive thing called happiness together, have to deal with this ice cold conundrum of fate. I ask myself "why?" and get mad about this a lot, myself, and I'm not even the one going through it like you!!!!!!!! It just seems like some cruel thing.

 

The people in this forum are the ones who have known REAL love, the way it's supposed to be. It inspires me endlessly to hope, to think this kind of love does exist, but it also breaks my heart, too, for the hand that has been dealt out.

 

One thing I'd like to say about connecting with Michael's soul...I believe that you're right, on some level you will always be seeking it. But here's something to ponder that I've done some pondering about...that Indian man (thank you for that story, and the whole story you told about how you met Michael! that's really moving)...had something he gave you. He was a soul that was meant to cross your path to teach you things about yourself. Michael took up where he left off, teaching you even more things, showing you even greater vistas. So he was a teacher as well. These people, as well as your sister and parents and family and friends all have their own unique way of teaching you in your life, their own contribution. And, you are that for them! You are their teacher along their path.

 

More teachers will come. And go.

 

I don't know why some "teachers", lovers who are that close, have to leave. But maybe...it can help you just a wee bit to see that we are all just souls criss-crossing eachother. And so, we all have these intersecting paths, but also our own journeys that we are making. Michael's journey was with you, and while he was with you, his soul took -- learned -- so much, too. He took some of you with him! Just as you keep some of him. I think what I'm trying to say is that while we may not know the reasons souls as teachers, loved ones as partners or friends come and go as they do, their entire destiny is (like everyone's is) much, much bigger than just the small piece of destiny we shared with them. Sometimes, I think of this planet as just a busy freeway of souls, passing, crossing, colliding...and at some point we are freed to unite. These are very personal views, and I have many others as well because I'm eclectic, but these are the ones that help me a lot, without just trying to make myself feel better. They feel true.

 

I know that's little comfort in the day-to-day feelings of missing him...but sometimes when it gets overwhelming, I find thinking about such things takes me out of the "small picture" of suffering into a larger vision.

 

And yes, this IS "your time" -- however long that is. You don't owe anyone a certain speed to deal with this, you don't need to be the "strong one". You don't need to be the one who is positive, who brings light to others this time. You need to go through everything you are feeling, and not prove yourself to anyone. That IS exhausting. If you feel you can't be yourself around those closest to you...I say take a chance. Test them -- these people love you unconditionally, right? So fall in front of them and don't apologize.

 

But do also make time to be alone as much as you need.

 

Be yourself. Just be yourself. The more you fight this pain, the more it will fight back at you to be heard.

 

(And by the way...good for you for even getting through my massive posts, I'm sorry I'm so long-winded...I know you must be weary of all this...but it's just the way these subjects get my mind thinking.)

[Dagless]

This just sums up exactly how I felt for a long time. I myself am very private with my feels, I think you could count in one hand the amount of times I cried in front of someone and even then it was only a little cry. The really helpless, uncontrollable crying was all done when I was on my own, usually at night when I was in bed. I would scream in to my pillow, heaven only knows how many tears those pillows have held.

 

It's important to have those little moments just to allow things to come out in whatever way they need to.

 

I don't know what it was that stopped me from breaking down in front of people, I kind of put the mask on and went about my business. People would ask me how I was doing and I would just say "Oh, I'm OK." and really in side I was thinking "Why are you saying that? You are so far from ok, why don't you just tell them that?" but I never did. I was lucky enough to find this place where I could just get stuff out, talk about things and just try and make some sense out of it all.

 

I think the most important piece of advice I can give to you is just keep posting here. As ToV said there are some really special people here, I own them my life and I don't say that lightly.

[KG]

MB,

I am the opposite of Dagless, cry anywhere, anytime, don't care! I had my heart ripped out, and if people have a problem with that, too bad!

But the tears must come, the heart must heal, my life has to go on. I have a son, and I have to be there for him.

I've told countless people that if it weren't for my boy, I'd be dead in a gutter somewhere...what's the point?

Since then, I've come to see that it would have been a waste if I did that. I've met so many caring, generous people, here, and in 3-D, that I'm glad he kept me sane long enough to see clearly. Life does go on, otherwise there wouldn't be words like widow, widower, etc. Should we all give up because we suffered something unimaginable to others?

I, for one, will stand at your side through this, as others here will also. They helped me, and now I can pay it back.

Please feel free to PM anytime, OK?

[mellybelly]

thank you so much for these words KG!

You are right...I know giving up would be a waste!

It's just picking up the pieces that is so hard. When two become one, and then one is taken away, you are left just a half. My soul aches so much. I admire how far you've come...your son is blessed with a great dad! Thank you for the encouragement KG. I feel so impaired as of late...but know that I am always here for you, too.

[thejigsup]

KG, I am always amazed at your wisdom and your kindness. Your posts always have so much beauty and truth to them. May you and your precious son know only the best of life from now on.