Adapting to loss is strange. Learning what the ‘after’ is like.
No loss is the same – mine is different to yours is different to someone elses.
[Mine is my Dad’s affair coming out earlier this year. We are not currently on speaking terms.]
In the moment it breaks you. There’s less behind the eyes, an emptiness in the chest. A shadow of the former self. It is your day to day reality, a constant blackness.
But then you slowly piece yourself back together, putting the parts of you back in order. Maybe you sigh less, maybe you’re less angry, maybe smiling is no longer a concerted effort.
And everything goes back to normal.
But its not, is it? This is the new normal. It can never be the way it was.
The hurt, months later, will surprise you. A Saturday night in watching Justified, tears come out of nowhere. The emptiness is a shock, a wound reopened. Realising that this is how it is now.
Because you can never be the same. I don’t know if anyone warned me about that. You can’t ever go back to the person you were before, you cannot take knowledge out no matter how much you may want to. It is a wound you will carry always, a hurt that will shape who you continue to become.
To strive for the past is aimless. I guess all we can do is hope that we carry our hurt well.
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