My eyes leak, regularly. I've always been a weepy woman during touching moments in movies, in life, while reading a good book, during parades with marching bands, weddings...you get my drift.
My eyes and my heart still cannot encompass the enormity of losing someone to suicide though. The mind can't grasp that much trauma at once. It protects us by numbing us in the beginning. Yes, we keep moving, we make decisions as best we can, but our heart is protected by not feeling. I am still taken back by the reality of this. Still trying to wrap my head around the facts and the fallout. Still trying to accept what I will never understand.
So I cry. Mostly I cry in the truck. I find that to be a safe space where the waves of emotion flood over. I can get through my work day just fine, yet in the safety of the truck my eyes leak. Sometimes I cry between home and the highway, sometimes between work and home. Sometimes I cry when I lay down at night. Sometimes I cry at a memory, or a moment, or for no obvious reason even to me. Those moments are my heart comprehending the scale of his actions and the pain of the loss.
My head simply cannot process this all at once. So in little bits and pieces, grief leaks out and healing happens. I get that this is a normal part of the process. I know some days it's harder than others, some less so. I know to others I look like I'm doing fine, functioning, and finding some joy in life. In some ways, and some days I am. It is hard to share the struggles and the pain. Partly because it comes and goes so randomly, and partly because people prefer not to hear it. It's a grueling pain to deal with from a choice ridden with stigma.
I know comprehension is difficult unless you've walked this path. I hate that my kids were taken on this journey because of this happening in my life. We want to protect those we love from intense trauma. And yet, they too have to grieve, they have been changed. While time has passed, it is still a pain in process. It is finding the strength and grace to keep moving, and taking time to weep when needed. It is breathing in and breathing out. It is owning the reality one day, one tear at a time.
