Year 8

slowly, and with much stealth, i creep back into this bright rectangle...

and on my mother's death day at that. 

despite the drama of the post below, i can tell you that Year 8 is not as painful as Year 1... not without pain - not nearly - but the quality of the pain is less sharp, less excruciating than it had been during the early years of her loss; more of a throb than a stab.  

i am sad but not caged by despair. i don't feel very social today and am certainly prone to self-pity, but i am not curled up in bed unable to wrest myself from the python squeeze of chronic depression. it had been that way for years and i am thankful it is not that way now. i can at least move from the bedroom to the kitchen. i have made myself a cup of coffee. i have made a cup for my sweetheart, as well. i am able to move. it doesn't matter that i go slowly. it doesn't matter than i may end up back in bed shortly. my mother would be thankful that her death is not as torturous as it once was... that i can feel her now rather than just her loss. the agony of her absence was all i could feel for a very long time. all i felt was her erasure. i have learned to walk without her for a long enough time now that i am suddenly able to feel the breezes of her energy. not always and not for long. but sometimes. 

though she is gone from my sight, she is not "gone." seems i have learned how to carry myself through the world as a "non-daughter" after all. 

at least a little bit.

though it is not a title i would have chosen, it is the title i have. i am glad to no longer buckle beneath the weight of it. there cannot be two deaths where there should only be one.