Anniversaries

Anniversaries are always tough. It was a few days ago now and I didn’t have the time and space on the day itself. (On a side note, I’m not sure deciding to start a blog just as I have assignments due was the best idea!) I wonder whether there will ever be a year where I won’t just want to curl up and scream for the day. But I do survive it every year.

It was, without doubt, the worst day of my life. It’s been 19 years this year and I don’t know how that much time has passed. In some ways it was a lifetime ago. In other ways it come have happened yesterday. On the day, I thought I was going to die. I thought I had finally pushed everything too far and the line had been crossed that I couldn’t come back from. Sometimes, the worst part of not dying is the pain you are left with when you survive. Not only that, but the pain of losing my child in the process goes beyond what words can describe. There is no way to say how much losing your child hurts, how it leaves a massive hole in your heart and in your life the sometimes feels like it will always be there and never be filled.

I do think that maybe anniversaries do get ever so slightly easier. It is never going to be an easy day, and I really miss some of the support I have had in past years. I missed the beach where we sailed the paper boats in her memory. I missed being with people who know about all of us and could look after all of us rather than just me. I missed having people around me who just knew and knew to come and give me a hug and just hold me up a bit. And maybe the thought of the day is sometimes more overwhelming than the actual day itself, and I survived it again, which is all I can ask of myself. Sometimes I think part of what can make it so hard, is not having people that know. When I want to celebrate what should have been her birthday and to remember, there is no one to do that with. And no one to remember, no one to say something to me without me having to say something first.

One of the scariest things I have realised over time is that actually I wasn’t that scared of death when it happened. It was only after did the fear creep in to it. And I’ve realised that I was so used to pain, so used to feeling like my world was ending and so used to feeling like I was dying, that when it happened this time, it was just another time to me. I cannot really explain what it feels like to think you are going to die when you feel completely calm about it. When you are just so used to pain that death almost feels welcome and that helps calm you down, it’s scary. No 15 year old should feel so used to pain that they would welcome death and be calm about death because it would end the pain.

Sometimes I think I still stand in this place. That sometimes I welcome death because it would stop the pain. I do know that there is another answer, death is not the only way, but it is hard to hold onto that. Death feels so peaceful and life feels hard and painful. But pushing through and finding where life could be peaceful would be an amazing thing to do. And every year I have proved that horrible anniversaries are survivable.

This is not just for me. Charlie, my 15 year old inside, is who lives with it far more than I do. She is the one who holds so much more of the pain, who needs so much more love and care than I do. I do my best for her, but I am not always good at that. And she doesn’t always want me. She has her own people that she is attached to, that she wants more than anything else. But sometime, I also need to recognise that she is an amazing girl, who survived things no one should ever have to face and go through. She has a strength that blows my mind. And sometimes, I have to look to her strength and the way she has survived and gotten through all that she has, to remind myself that if she had to battle so much and if she can stay alive and fight her way through it all, then I owe it to her to do the same.