Better, Doesn't Mean Better

The last few days I've felt "better". A word I have heard countless times from friends and family. If better means not thinking about Matthew every second of each day, or being distracted for hours on end by a new game my husband and I are playing, or being able to sleep without crying first, then yes, I have been feeling better.

And I hate it.

I hate it so much. I miss the constant tears, the anguished thoughts, feelings of perpetual loneliness, the inability to function in daily life. I miss it all, because that's what Matthew meant to me. He meant everything. Every aspect of life, tiny and large, and without him, life shouldn't be able to go on. But it does. It keeps going. I can't stop the world from spinning, but in my heart, Matthew's death should have.

My grief is still incredibly great, but it is very slowly starting to not control my life. Very slowly. That scares me. When you have grief of this scale, it becomes all you know. I feel if I let go of it even the slightest bit, I will forget the intensity of love I have for my little boy. You don't recover from a loss this great, you re-learn life, you change, and you're never the same. The world looks different. Each moment looks different. You are different.

I think that is what scares me: I feel different, I act different, I think differently. My heart is harder, guarded now, and my compassion has dwindled.

Change. That's what it boils down too. So much change in so short a time. Not good, exciting change either, but hard, gut wrenching change. I've gone from young wife, to expectant mother, to mother of an absent child in less than a year. I used to have it all figured out. Now, I know nothing. When I finally was starting to understand and love life, it threw me a curveball. All I can do is hang on for the ride now, and hope that things get "better".