Feel the grief

"Try to accept where you are at.  Feel the grief instead of fighting against it."

The above are words written on a page in one of my child loss grief books; my eyes swell with tears every time I read them and my heart tells me it's solid advice, but for some reason, my brain is too stubborn to even consider their suggestion.  These words echo the same advice that was shared by a holocaust survivor I recently attended a lecture of, I know I should be following them.  Yet, I have had similar difficulties over the last 5 years accepting where I was at with her CDKL5 diagnosis, so I can only imagine how this whole acceptance of my current state of grief or really of her not being here is going to unfold.

I have been having difficulty accepting anything about what occurred 5 weeks ago; especially that it has been five entire weeks, that it has been more than a month, that it has been around 50,400 minutes, really that any amount of time has gone by in general.  I know she is not in her room, I know she is not in our house, I know she is not at an extended stay at the Ryan House, I know she is not here on this earth, I know exactly where her body is located yet I cannot allow myself to actually process that.  It is significantly easier for me to remain in this land of denial and not accept any of it, versus feeling all the feelings that any level of acceptance would bring.  I am sent into an immediate state of panic if I even consider feeling, and the pain is just too much to bear as it is when any amount of tears fall from my eyes.  I cannot possibly justify feeling any more of this.

I allow myself to feel grief in moments, in small doses, in an almost tangible amount, but anything more than split seconds of acknowledgment is just more than I can even consider.  Maybe where I am at is "fighting against it" and at this current moment that is just where I am going to need to remain to continue to be a functioning member of society.  Maybe in a sense, I am actually accepting where I am at, that I am unable to fully feel the reality of grief.  I guess, for now, that is going to have to be my attempt at trying because I am just not ready to feel any more grief. From where I am sitting, "fighting against it" is actually a whole lot easier than feeling, and to be honest I am not sure if either way is right.