It has been four years since the day that altered my being to the core.
Many things have happened since then.
It was three years ago that she began to gently mend my shattered heart.
It was a little more than two years ago that I “officially” stepped from the shadow of anonymity into the light, yet admittedly keeping some parts of me in the shadow.
It’s been little less than a year that I started what I consider to be my most ambitious project to date.
Change.
It happens as we live and as we learn.
It’s a lie that “time heals all wounds”. Instead what time affords us is the lessons we need to better handle and manipulate the grief. It doesn’t become easier to smile, we just become better at controlling the corners of our mouth. Last year, I stopped posting about DJ every 21st of the month. I don’t grieve any less nor does one day go by when I don’t think about him, I just became better at controlling the keys my fingers would strike.
Priorities change. Things that perhaps once I cared about so passionately, now not so much. Things that perhaps once would have angered me, now not so much. I try to keep in mind that while these things don’t matter to me as much, to others they are very important. Most of the time that keeps me in check… but there are sometimes when I do slip and proverbially shake people wondering why they care about the small stuff, because when it comes to family everything else is just that… small stuff.
Change.
Some things change, but some things don’t.
The love and support I have gotten from my blogging friends has never faltered. It has often carried me during the day in one way or another. They say once it’s on the internet, you can never take it back… and believe me I am more than okay with that because there’s a whole lotta love out there. Of this, I assure you.
Still some things haven’t changed. While I no longer run to the burning building, I still walk to it. While I no longer rush through the streets, I still drive through them destined for something that death, pain, and misery will have a hand in. Perhaps I am more acutely aware of my own mortality, but still lacking a normal sense of self-preservation that I continue to do what I know how to do the best way I know how.
To admittedly “borrow” a term from another blogger… I am a grief mop for those who are overcome at the moment. Of course what good is a mop that hasn’t been wrung? It seems no matter how many times I came back here to wring myself out, I’d just get soaked up again. At times it feels like futile effort.
I still wonder if I had done everything I could to prevent this, and if not what should I have done instead? I still wonder if I had done something different, would the outcome have been different or was it that whole concept of fate running its course? I still wonder, for today as opposed to four years ago, what would he have to say or want to do? What would he want to be? And therein lies my problem, because I still torture myself with the ”What ifs?” In doing so am I repeating my past mistakes?
These are questions I will never get the definitive answer to nor do I expect one. It’s just the things that can keep me awake at night… doubts that creep into my being and set me on tilt. It’s my inquisitive side run rampant.
However, there is one question that I have no doubt what the answer would be…
