This is my 200th post. I feel like that needs some sort of notation, so there it is.
This week, I changed the pictures on my Facebook. The profile picture was of my memorial tattoo for Ian. The header picture was of him bowling. That one was a really good picture of him. I feel guilty for doing so. I feel like it means I’m forgetting him (outwardly). I’m not. I still miss him constantly. But I also feel like it’s time for me to hide that some.
I may still be mourning him. I may still be deep in grief, but I feel like it’s time for me to stop flaunting it. For some reason. I may yet change my mind and put things back where they were. But for now, I feel like being less outwardly broken.
I guess life continues, right? And at some point, if you don’t continue with it, you’re stuck and it’s bad.
He’d laugh at me and tell me I was being a doofus. He’d tell me that over a year is far too long – especially for the likes of him. I’d tell him he was full of shit, and a thousand years wasn’t enough.
My new pictures are… less than happy, kind of. They’re both lovely, but they’re also indicative of things that have sad meanings in my life. The new profile picture is me and my grandma, when I was very young. She’s getting older now, and losing her mental capacities, which is heartbreaking because she was so smart. But she’s keeping her optimistic outlook. I wouldn’t be able to do that. And the background is a really cool mural that a friend did in the house I bought with my ex (who is still a good friend)… it’s a mushroom cloud (the house was called Doomsday Manor, and we were going to make an apocalypse room out of the room the mural is in. It was a lot of fun). To me the mushroom cloud connotes the massive destruction that went through my life in the past couple years.
I’m a very dark person sometimes. But it makes me feel less disingenuous to put out things like that, as opposed to happy happy joy joy pictures that make it seem like I’m perfectly happy with the world. Even if I’m the only one who realizes what they mean. So… I’m moving forward… but not really a lot.
Eh. It’s all navel gazing at this point. I still miss him, I’m still very broken, and I continue on, because I must.
Written 3/31/2015
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As someone who has experienced loss, I can honestly say that I still miss and grieve my loved one literally every day–and it will be six years this June. So from my experience I wouldn’t say that your “outward” choices mean that you are grieving any less, I would say that your grief is no longer defining you. Which is a good thing. It can become a part of you without being who and what you are, and frankly I think that honors those we have lost. It means we’ve moved to a place where we can embody both the terrible ache of their absence, as well as the fulness of the life they SHOULD have had.
I like that idea. Thank you.