In my last post, I said I was doing okay, that I didn’t splinter into pieces at the knowledge that there’d be no rainbow this month. But the truth is, everything I experience is accompanied by sadness. While the darkness might come and go, the sadness remains. It remains because no matter what I’m doing, it’s not as it should be because of all we’ve lost; there’s always something missing. The coming and going of each month with no rainbow baby in sight only seems to enhance the sadness. Yesterday, the sadness hit me with a renewed intensity that I hadn’t expected. I didn’t want to get out of bed, I never once felt calm throughout the day, always on the verge of tears. The emptiness threatened to swallow me up, and I willingly allowed it. That’s the thing about grief, it’s not linear. You can’t always predict when it will hit, whether it’s days, month, or years after the fact. As Lucy’s first birthday quickly approaches, I find that my grief seems to have been renewed, and along with that, I’m not reacting to additional setbacks all that well. I just can’t seem to catch my breath from grief, nor can I see Lucy’s light as vividly as I thought I could before. That scares me. It makes me feel vulnerable, uncomfortable, restless, quick to anger… I don’t want these things to be true, but it’s just how it is right now. I’m doing my best to see the goodness and the glimmers of light and love around me. I know that it’s always there somewhere, but it’s hard to see when the emptiness becomes so vast. I’d like to think it won’t always be this way, but I know that the ebb and flow of my grief will continue throughout my lifetime. There’s nothing that can be done immediately to soothe the pain, nor is there anything anyone can say to make it better; it will always be within me to some degree. For now, I just have to make it through each day as well as I can, trying to be the best person I can be considering the circumstances. In spite of how hard I’ve been on myself lately, I can at least admit that I’m doing a good job of surviving. To look at me, you’d almost think I’m okay, that I’m thriving even. I’m still doing good things, and some doors are even opening to new opportunities, like being asked to join the writing team over at Still Standing (truly, it’s the first thing I’ve been genuinely excited about). I don’t want to seem ungrateful for all of the wonderful things that still exist in my life, but I have to be honest and say that no matter what, nothing’s ever going to feel quite right without Lucy. This has all changed me so much, and there’s no going back to being the person I once was. For now, all I can continue to do is just keep getting by the best I can.

I really miss her today.