How?

When does it end?  It doesn't...it just gets easier to manage.  Or at least, that is what they tell me.  And then it comes to light that the stupid things I have been doing, they have been enabling me to hide from my grief, postpone it...but like it says in Tear Soup, if I don't face it, then it will just crust over and get more messed up than it should have been.  Acknowledging this, I feel...a little less fear, but a lot more pain.

The reality is that there is nothing to hold me up as I go through this...there is me.  There is no one here who loves me more than anyone else.  Do not let your thoughts go to my kids.  That is different.  I know and love that they keep me smiling and alive and moving forward.  I do not take them for granted, nor do I discount them in any way.  It's just that it is a different thing I am talking about.

I think of John so much more now, that my stupid choices are done.  I think, too often, "I'm sorry"...is that the deep path to my grief?  Sorrow?  Some version of regret?  Feeling like there is nothing to fight for isn't right...I have the children we created, I have perhaps half my life left...I have to believe in myself, but without John that is quite difficult.  And every time I reach for someone else, and they help me, or I reach for them and they don't need me or reach for me the way I need them to, it gets harder.  I guess I have to stop reaching...but I need to be clear that reaching is not the same as asking for help...I don't, yet, know how to tell them apart, or to explain the difference...but I see the separation.

I suppose I need to be fixed from the inside.

But who can do that?  How can that be done?  The only way is for me to fix myself.  To open the door to the pain I have been afraid of, that I have been blocking...but the problem is that the pain I have been blocking is too big to live with.

If I hide from my grief, I am afraid it will get so big  I cannot handle it.  If I allow it to come through, in its entirety, I fear it will destroy me.  I have to say "goodbye" to the first person I KNOW would love me no matter what.  There is no one, not mother, not grandmother, not father, no one...that I truly found a way to believe in that with.  Until John.  And he is dead.  and now I have dating sites, dog poop, diapers, lesson plans, responsibility, pain, fear, loneliness, loss, I have life.

Without him.