I Swear You Will Be Fine

So much of what we are going through feels like what you were going through for almost half of your life. I wonder sometimes if it was harder for you even earlier, but you lacked the maturity to explain it.

Tiredness seems to be a constant now. It was something you complained a lot about. One of our last text messages was about this. “The tiredness is back” you had said. And I didn’t know how to manage it. Coffee, multivitamins and vitamin B complex were the only options I had. I always wondered why you would be exhausted from just a couple of hours at Uni. Now we are experiencing all of the above. It is an effort to get out of bed and get ready for work. I know now to just a small extent how tough it must have been for you to get out of bed. The temptation to just stay in bed all day is sometimes so overwhelming. It must have been even harder for you.

Every little thing slightly negative is even more negative now. The temperature of the environment needs to be just perfect. One degree higher or lower irritates me to the max. I’m constantly adjusting the aircon in my room and in the car. I can’t cope with the heat. I’m annoyed when it rains and the ground is wet. I’m annoyed when the traffic lights take forever to change, and when the elevator takes time to come.

Even physical illnesses seem to take so much longer to recover. A bruise I got on my arm several days ago is still there. Flus are taking so much longer to recover. Is it grief? I can hear you saying, “No Mum, it’s old age”.

I’m more annoyed when I’m dealing with some work colleagues. I feel like screaming at them, “Why can’t you get it”. Jess was showing me a book and was telling me to buy it, “How to deal with stupid people”.  But I didn’t. I remember so many conversations you had with me about dealing with stupid people. See Josh, it’s rubbing off on me now.

And of course, conflicts are so much harder now. Minor issues blow up into big things. Everyone is irrational. This happened so many times with you and me too. Most days we would apologise to each other. But there were several nights we went to bed angry, and I would worry throughout the night how you were.

Just days after you passed, I remember reading in a grief book, that I needed to make a decision- whether I was going to live or I was going to die. This was not in the literal sense. “Dying” was more about just curling up and not getting out of bed. And “living” was to live life to the fullest, as much as possible. I thought about it then, and decided at the time that “dying” would be harder. Staying in bed all day in my grief would be harder. And I felt I needed to “live” for Jess. Friends are also reminding me that I need to also “live” for myself.

It is still so tempting. To just not be bothered about life anymore. And to just exist. These feelings come in so many times, sometimes several times a day. But I tell myself it will not be fair to you. You would not have wanted me to spend the rest of my life like that. It is also not fair to the several angels that have been put in my path, all willing me to keep on living.

And so this is where we are. Everything is so much harder. Some moments, I am trying to “live”. And others….I am just existing. There must have been more than several moments that you were just existing. Thank you for doing that for so long.

Love you darling,

Mum