This Anniversary, I’ll Be Better: Grieving in Cycles

I grieve in cycles.

Most of the year, it isn’t obvious I’m a broken shell of the woman I was. I manage, and quite well sometimes, to be funny. To be engaging. To look as though I’ve glued myself back together, less the stray component here and there I simply couldn’t find in the wreckage of my former life.

Then it’s November again, and before I know it, I’ve spent weeks without leaving the house, and I’ve haunted these rooms without so much as powering on my laptop.

I sometimes just forget to live.

I start to do the things I know aren’t healthy. I sleep too much. I refuse to make plans. I don’t answer my phone, I haven’t since December, actually.

I recognize the pattern, and every year I vow I will fix it. I will do better, I will be stronger, not this fraud. Not this sham.

Again, this year, I have failed.

It’s no longer acceptable for me, socially, to grieve in this manner. “It’s been 20 years, can’t you get it together?” more than once has been asked.

No. No, it seems I can’t.

This is the hard part, the worst part. In November I remember my daughter being born, her father and I so happy, life so much but guaranteeing the train wouldn’t jump the track.

But February. February is all memories of the coldest rain I’ve ever felt, and going to my knees in the dirt, people gasping around me as I tried to take my child back from the loam under which they had placed her.

February is that Incubus song on repeat, and her father and I in the backseat and I’m just repeating, “this is the worst day ever”, and tears stream down my brothers-in-law’s face.

February is learning at 22 that Psalms are songs to a kings’ dead child, and that baby coffins are tiny little coffee tin boxes, and that’s the most horrified I’ve ever been, stepping into the room that held only miniature sepulchers.

February was when God made an enemy of me, and I tell Him as much when the rain falls like it did that year. That if I had to shove Pete to the ground, I have an appointment, and I’ll be keeping it, thank you very much.

Just to be certain, I tattooed my wings upon my back, because I told her I would be at the agreed upon location, and I’d advise everyone to step out of my way when the time draws near.

I was late once. This time, though, this time I’ll make it. This time she will see that I didn’t fail her. I’ll be there, just like I promised her I would be.

I won’t have another February like the one that destroyed me. Next year, I’ll be better.

Next year, I just know I’ll be better.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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