I write.

I haven't written a word from the heart since my dad died this past May. I yearn to bleed onto this page. To release the things that keep me up at night. To express the nightmares that jolt me awake in the early hours of the morning, before the sun even wakes. Nothing comes.

I have been running from the pain for years. I took on projects to keep my mind busy. I finished school. Now I sit with time on my hands. I lament the last 10 years of my life. It becomes too much. Most days the reality of what I have lost outweighs the things I have gained. In the last decade I became a mother. I never knew I could love something the way I love them. They are monsters and they make me crazy and will forever be my beautiful distractions. I was also married to one of my best friends and then divorced. I am too broken to make someone happy. I am not happy with myself. I may never heal from the things that torment me. I may never feel safe and at home again. 

In the course of the last 10 years both of my parents and my best friend died. That sentence makes my body ache. When I say it, it sounds so...foreign. No way did that happen to me. No way did I make it through and finish my degree. No way do I function and keep two beautifully amazing monsters alive everyday. There's just no way. I guess impossible things happen everyday. 

 The fact that the people I was closest to in the world are gone is unimaginable. It takes the very essence of my soul and twists. It twists my soul past the point of feeling. I start to feel nothing. I miraculously make it through each day, one step and then another. I rarely give myself the luxury to acknowledge they existed. To acknowledge how much I loved them is like a betrayal to my survival. It feels like the coldest of winter days. The kind of day that to step outside takes your breathe away and leaves your bones frozen from the inside. 

I do not feel like the strong, independent and capable woman people tell me I am. What those people don't understand is I succeeded in doing the things they admire because I hide. I bury myself so deep it feels like the pain is someone else's. Because how the fuck do you process the death of your entire family? I miss them so much most days I feel it in my soul. As though something is tearing it from my body an inch at a time. The excruciating pain...how do I begin to process it?  

I write.