Is being invisible a gift or a curse?
I know it’s been awhile. I’ve stayed off of social media (closed my account) and tried to just decompress a bit and sit with the sadness or happiness of the day instead of allowing social media into my life to redirect my attention. But here we are; back at the holiday season.
A month ago I would have told you I was doing okay. Everything was tolerable and while I still think about my son every single day I didn’t feel like I couldn’t go to work or function. Then, a couple of weeks ago Loki (our baby (cat)) got sick and suddenly died. The vet doesn’t know what caused his issues. Losing my best friend really hit hard. I realized that night that he was the one that I went to. He was always outside for me to talk to when humans didn’t notice my hurt or I just couldn’t talk to them. He got me through those awful days when we lost our son. He kept me company every time I was outside; following me around when I gardened or sitting on the side of the pool when it was only me swimming. He was my person!
And with the holidays drawing in fast I’m starting to feel like I did last year which I didn’t think I would. I have found that most often when I finally get up the nerve to put my pride aside and reach out to someone to talk in my moments of utter pain they’re too busy. I’m invisible. Sometimes it means that I can just sneak past you in the grocery store so I don’t have to pretend to be okay and that’s to my benefit. But sometimes I do want someone to notice that I’m in pain and just need that shoulder. I don’t have that shoulder. I can’t find one that will always be there.
I feel very alone. No one in my entire (extended included) family understands what this feels like and no one wants to acknowledge I’m still deep in grief. I pretend most of the year, but I just can’t sometimes. It’s exhausting. I mean think about it…..just to be productive at work I have to pretend 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year, 8 hours a day. That’s a lot of being fake and I was never really good at that.
My son visited in my dream this week. I hugged him so hard that when I woke up, in the middle of it, I was crying for real and I swear I could still feel my arms around his waist. It was always his waist because he was too tall to hug otherwise. I’m a whole foot shorter. He talked to me, but this time it wasn’t as clear. The only thing that was was that he told me he was watching me at the grocery store but couldn’t let me know he was there. These are all I have left of him. Memories of dreams. Memories that I have to write down in order not to lose. No pictures to capture. Just what I can recover from my brain in the early hours of the day while I’m still a little incoherent and foggy.
Losing Loki, dreaming of my son and the holidays coming so quickly are like the perfect storm of emotions that I can’t control or fathom what to do with. Add that into my mother-in-law being, normal, and hurting me at every turn she can. You would think after 31 years of her obvious discourse for me (maybe even hate) I would let it go, but she won’t stay out of our lives so she gets to continue to jab. Invisibility would be nice there, wouldn’t it?
My sweet baby…..Cole take care of this one. He was pretty great.
