Grieving

Still making my way through this mess of life lately, and it just seems to keep getting messier and more complicated. It is certainly testing my strength and patience right now.

This post is going to be filled with a lot of things straight from my heart tonight that I may regret posting later and delete, but for now, this is what is on my mind tonight.

I know when it comes to losing people you love and grieving, you shouldn't put a time line on it - but I have for myself. Unintentionally, but it has happened. I keep telling myself that it has been 4 1/2 months since they were killed, and I should be doing better by now. I shouldn't still be at the point of crying myself to sleep multiple times a week. I shouldn't still be at the point that it hurts too much to even go to the cemetery - something I haven't done since the day of the funerals. I shouldn't still be at the "angry with God" point. But I am - and in my heart I know all of these things are normal when something like this happens so unexpectedly, but my head doesn't want to believe it. I feel like if I don't allow myself to deal with it, it won't hurt as much. The truth is I'm realizing now that now allowing myself to deal with it is just hurting me more in the end.

With Samantha, its hard in another way. When she was diagnosed last year, the doctors were very optimistic, but in the back of my head I always thought something could go wrong, afterall, it was a malignant brain tumor we are talking about. That thought was always there. She was doing so well. I hadn't talked to her in a few weeks, life just got in the way and I hardly had time to breathe. She had turned 22 on May 3rd, and for the first time in our 5 year friendship, I missed her birthday because I was working earlier in the day, 8-4, and busy with other things after work. Later that very same week, she was hospitalized, then transferred to the palliative care unit, and died all in a matter of days. I didn't even know she had taken a bad turn until the day she died when I found out. I will never be able to forgive myself for it. And to make matters worse, I found out about her death through FACEBOOK. My friends didn't take the time to pick up the phone or stop by and tell me. I had to find out online. With Samantha as well, she was cremated and has no resting place, her family has her remains, so I don't even have that option of going to the cemetery - she isn't there. That factor alone makes me feel SO bad about not yet going to the cemetery to visit Leigh and Megan, but I just can't do it. I can't bring myself to get up the courage to do it. I'm afraid I'm going to fall apart.

I still haven't gone back to church. This alone makes me want to hate myself right now. I used to go twice every single Sunday plus youth group after church Sunday nights, plus was involved with different activities on Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Now - I have not been to church since June. I am still at the point in the process where I am angry with God - which is the last thing I should be, but I'm being honest here. I don't know what to do. I wish there was a magical way to get over this or deal with this, a "right" way to deal with it - but there isn't. And nothing I feel, nothing I say, nothing I do is going to bring the 3 of them back. So why am I so angry? I wish I knew. I don't feel like I have a right to be angry, even though I am, and it is making this so much harder that I continuously beat myself up and hate myself for the way I feel right now.

I never realized how much grief can really mess you up. You don't think it will happen to you, until it does. When it happens to someone else you think to yourself how you would deal with it differently and deal with it "better" than that person - until it happens to you. There are no right or wrong ways to grieve - so why am I beating myself up over it? I don't even have the answer to that myself right now.