Push me...

This is hard
This is hard
This is hard
This seems to be the refrain running through my mind most of the time these days. Aspects of my grief are being brought out daily as each new day is a new experience with someone new and I am constantly reconciling the new with the old. Constantly readjusting my focus. Constantly experiencing happiness and joy with the underlying tinge of sadness that this isn’t really how it was all supposed to turn out. The tears come so easy these days. Quick and hot on my cheeks. I am not the tough, strong girl I used to be. I allow myself to be more in touch with my emotions these days but it hurts. I question whether I am really ready to be in another relationship yet if I feel so emotional about all of this. But the answer is that you’re never really ready- no matter when it happens all of these issues will bubble up and you have to endure to move past it.

I thought I had gotten to a place of calm functioning with my grief. I was not doubled over in pain every day anymore. I could make it several days in a row sometimes weeks without crying. So to have it all brought back out and on the surface again feels doubly painful and confusing. How could something that makes me so happy bring me so much heartache. All I can think is…
No, I’m not going back here.
I was past this.
I don’t want to feel this again.

But I have to. You cannot know how grief will color and overshadow everything you do for the rest of your life until you walk into each and every new experience. You cannot prepare yourself for how it will feel to fall in love with someone else until it starts happening. And it hurts because you grieve all over again for the loss of the one you once loved. You can’t begin to understand how it will feel to have another person literally in his place at the table, sitting beside you in church, and holding the children, until you see it happening.

Being with someone new and trying to put all of my trust in them to be there for me only reignites my abandonment issues. The two most important men in my life both died suddenly and unexpectedly… my father when I was 15, and 15 years later it was my husband. The fear of that kind of loss happening again is paralyzing. I simply could not manage to pick myself back up from that kind of devastation.

I don’t want to revisit the pain so it seems easier to run from it. I think about sabotaging what I have in this new relationship and I even give it a pretty good effort, but in the end can’t bring myself to walk away from this incredible man who is so freaking understanding of it all. Who wants to help me heal and wants to be beside me in the process to support me through it. And as he reminds me, I could put this off but inevitably I will be with someone someday and all of this will come out again. Pay now or pay later.

So in pushing him away I’m really acting out of self-preservation but in doing so then I stay stuck. This is when I need someone to push me. To be behind me and say it’s all going to be okay and I will survive this. And he does. He does so with such dignity and gentle encouragement that I can’t help but believe him.
So I’ll continue to let him push me.
But damn it hurts.