I feel like I have officially run out of things to say. I feel like I’m failing at Kate’s Cause. Her voice. Her life. Her purpose. I’ve become silent on the subject; quiet here on her page. I can’t seem to do anything but think about her and long for her.
Her life was JOY and I’m living in anything but. I’m plodding along, sure. But that makes me feel bad, too. Like I’m getting better. “Getting better” sounds awful. Who wants to get better from this? It’s impossible to explain how that feels; I don’t want to get better. I want to keep her close and the pain is the only way I feel I can do that. But the pain is too much to bear. It’s too much to carry. The finality of it all…the fact that this is it, forever, is excruciating. It’s hitting me SO much harder these days than ever before. I cry alone ALL.THE.TIME so I don’t break down in public. You might even say I’m doing well. Trust me. I am not. I’m dealing with it the only way I know how…to plan, to get out and to love her in the present tense. And loving her in present tense when I cannot have her in the physical present makes me wish my life away.
But that doesn’t bring back her little fingers and painted toes. It doesn’t bring back her laugh and foot steps in my house. It doesn’t prevent the panic attack and heavy breathing and tears when I think about her last moments, or what she’d endure if she had survived. It doesn’t prevent the overwhelming rush of anxiety that goes up my spine and flushes my face when it hits me, again and again and again. She’s gone. She’s never coming back.
I’m not sure I ever “properly” mourned her in those first few days. My house was FULL from day 1 and stayed that way for a week. I never took to my bed, shut out the world or ignored anyone. I mourned with my friends and family and not alone. I feel the need to go actively mourn her now. I feel like taking to my bed, ignoring the world and being alone. Trouble is, I won’t get up if I do.
I need you all to know that when I come here, I write for me…I write to get out what I need to say. I love you all more than you can ever know, but this space is for me to be real…with…well, the universe, maybe. Don’t get me wrong…reading how you love her, how you feel her close and how you reassure me that I WILL see her again…it helps. It helps in the minute I read your posts about how much you feel for us, how you are loving us from afar and how you love different because of Kate. I APPRECIATE you and I NEED you. It helps.
But…at the end of the day, no comment, post or hug fixes this. Nothing fixes this. I feel like I am broken underneath the now thick skin that covers me. Shine a light from the inside out and you’ll see my cracks. Take my mind off of distracting things for a nano-second and my mind is on her. Always, always on her. It’s where I want to stay. Always, always with her. Even with all this pain, I want to be nowhere but always with her.