facing the holiday

As I approach my first major holiday without Donnie, I am sad. I know that it will be a hard Christmas for the kids and I without him. The grief can be so much bigger than me and it draws me into places that I don’t want to go. Gried has changed me and I hate it. I want to go back to when my life was simple again. Before cancer tore my world apart. I try not to think about it too much because I know that there is nothing that I can do to bring those days back. I can only focus on the future. It’s hard to explain to someone who isn’t “where I am” in life. The feeling of being so tired but not being able to sleep,or not wanting to go to sleep because you don’t want to face waking up again the next morning and realizing that he isn’t there. the feeling of being lost at times and the complete exhaustion that can come along with this grief. There is an emptiness and a void in my life that can’t be seen but can only be felt. It is a void that can’t be filled. I must learn to live with that void. It’s like cutting off a limb and learning how to function again without it. It won’t ever grow back or be replaced but somehow you have to find a way to adjust and learn to live the way that you are now.


Losing Donnie changed me. Fear is now a part of my every day life. Fear of a future without Donnie, the fear of the unknown. There is the fear of letting people get close to me as I want to protect my heart from any more hurt. I wonder will I ever feel like I am truly living again and not only surviving. I wonder if I will ever just fall asleep peacefully again and not have a million thoughts running thru my mind. I wonder when I will be able to find myself and my new life without him.

I am still grieving and have lost my way but I know , or atleast I hope, that somewhere down deep I am still the woman that I once was. Just because I am lost and afraid doesn’t mean that I won’t ever find that “me” again. I worry that I am not strong enough to get thru this but somehow, some way I find enough strength each day to get out of bed, put on a smile (well ,some days) and face the world again. I have always been a fighter and although at times I get scared that this monster called grief will beat me but I know that it won’t win. How? Because that is who I am.