From 'Safe Passages' By Molly Fumia

"Don't let anyone else talk you out of your grief. There will be those that urge you to move on, but that is not yet possible. You can not be persuaded to abandon  something that you have become, as you have become this profound hurt. You are waiting, and they must wait with you. You will know when your identity is again changing, when the new person, the one who has lovingly layered her pain, her healing, and her new understanding around the skeleton of her soul, is ready to emerge."

There are definitely varying stages of grief, and to think or have someone tell you that you will go them all in the proper order, is just nutty. Completely.

This is something that I hope to convey to others who have gone through the pain of loss. I, unfortunately know your pain, and I too carry it with me everyday. Sometimes with grace and others times in a messy, horrific lump. Those days are not pretty, but they do need to be talked about, just as much as the graceful days. 

After 3 years I thought I would just automatically prance into the graceful days and go on with a renewed sense of self. One of my more finer flawed moments of thought. As the time has gone on, I have found that all the pain that I have chosen to neglect and stuff in a box and throw onto a shelf has become even more achingly prevalent and washes over me more like a thief int he night now more than ever before.

"Why? Please God? Why?" This is what I plead at 3 in the morning when sleep is not my companion, yet fear, and loneliness and even sometimes reliving the whole event over again. haunt me. I just don't understand. I do not have any inkling why, all of those that have said time would become come friend, have lied to me. 

I see now, that my only choice left is to face it. Head on, with my head held high, and the dignity which  I have failed to give myself in the last several months. Instead I have given way to bouts of "checking  out" with the use of alcohol, sleep or the combination of the two, only to wake hungover and more miserable than I was when I began. I honestly believe I have done this to myself because at some point I stopped listening to what I needed and who I am, and instead splintered myself into a fragmented person of who I thought I should be.

I have finally decided to choose to find the quiet within myself, and carve out a much needed path back to the sanity I have greatly missed for such a long time now. I am still unsure of my proper direction, or even my "right" path, but I know now that the skeleton of my soul now wishes to be full again.