The Bereaved

I feel like I exist in this completely warped and separate world.



Everything feels so large, dark, menacing, and sharp. I'm afraid. I feel scared.

I don't know what to think and I don't know what to feel.

I don't belong in the world of the mourners and I don't belong with everyone else. In a completely separate existence. An existence that I no longer want to exist within.

I feel threatened.

I feel as if I want to reach out for someone. I want to ask for help. And I want someone to support me. I want to feel like someone is there, that I'm connected. I want to feel alive and warm and as if I exist. I want to feel tied to the world, a different world than the one I am in. I debated all evening if I would call someone, if I would make the call, if I would make the connection, reach out.

I didn't and I don't know why I didn't.

Last night I was walking through the streets to my car and it was as if the shadows could swallow me whole. Everything has claws. As if just around the corner there lay some secret, silent, invisible threat, ready to pounce on me, devour me. As it did her.

I'm just so afraid.

And fear doesn't make sense in the context of grief. But I'm struggling for what would be right in the context of grief.

At the same time I feel like I don't want anyone anymore. I don't want friends, I don't want to be close. I don't want to feel the claustrophobic closeness of needing someone, loving someone,  letting someone matter. Because there have been so many surprises and so many deaths and so many illnesses, everyone is in danger. Everyone is at risk. Everyone and anyone can be taken at any moment. They too, even if they don't yet see it, are living in this dark, dark threatening world. The monsters follow them too.

And I don't know if I could withstand the weights that I see on the shoulders of the bereaved. I don't think I could put on so many brave faces and brave fronts and I don't think I could take it. I cannot bear a loss. One more loss. One bigger loss.

I feel like the next straw, the next stress, the next anxiety could break me.

I cannot lose. And because I cannot lose I have this immense fear in my heart of gaining, or winning. of growing and going.

I can't sleep at night. And when I do I wake frazzled. As if my mind was just racing and suddenly it's stopped. My dreams are hyper-speed and when I awake everything is slow motion. Slow motion and silence.

Slow motion and silence.