A Pre-Owned Life with Frayed Laces

Logan in his Moon Shoes

Maybe I need a pair of these to help me walk this road

I feel Logan's absence like a physical void when I am out doing things that remind me I'm alive. I am somehow betraying his memory when I do something he would have enjoyed. I have split-second excitement at times when I have a thought of getting to tell him what adventure I've been up to. I see things or read things and think about how much he would love to do or see it. When my impulsive thought catches up with my rational mind, I can actually hear an iron door slam shut sometimes. I realize it doesn't matter if he would love it or enjoy it or not. He doesn't enjoy or love anything anymore.

I miss being ignorant of what a true broken heart feels like. In the first few months after Logan died, I knew whenever I reached out there would be someone there to help me and offer me support. I am pragmatic; I knew over time it would fade as people went back to their lives. I made the mistake of thinking I could somehow go back to mine as well; it would be changed, of course, but would be mine. That life is gone. I made all of my adult decisions based on being his parent and because of it have an adult life very different from what I would have chosen for just myself.  I don't have a life I want to go back to because my life reminds me in every way that it is incomplete without him.

I am angry. I am angry at him for giving up and not letting us help him. I am angry at myself for all of the things that the burden of hindsight makes so obvious. I get angry at how he is always there in the back of my thoughts and I can't escape feeling sad. I'm angry at how much I miss him. I am angry that when we were together I was challenged to be my best and I don't know how to do that without him to do it for. The list of how I'm angry with the world would fill a swimming pool. Real anger isn't red- it is black. It sucks all light and hope into its inky depths. I am scared of the black.

When my sister and I decided we needed to DO something to have Logan's death not be just another sad statistic, I hoped it would repel that darkness. I had a lot of support and encouragement from friends and people I barely knew. It was an amazing feeling to have so much care and love showered on us. Almost smothering at times, but not in a bad way. It made the first few months bearable. I would have broken inside without it. I was careful to not over-use people in the aftermath, somehow thinking I could hold their caring for me in reserve until a later time when I needed it.

Maybe I should have been stronger and done more right after he died to get things moving and the momentum pushing forward. I was torn; everything I did in building the foundation both hurt and made me feel more okay at the same time. Everyone was so supportive-- cheering me on and saying how awesome it was that we were taking our grief and loss and making good from it. Now I'm in a place where the work makes me feel like I may have a purpose to live and much of the support system has moved to their lives. I am finally strong enough to not burst into tears and cry ten times a day so I can make smart, productive decisions.

Until you have a traumatic loss like I've had you don't "get" the moment-by-moment pervasiveness of soul-tearing grief. So I understand people moving forward with their lives and their problems when I am still lost. I feel alone in a crowd of shadows. I didn't get that myself until it happened to me. The scary thing is loss can happen to anyone, at any time.

People tell me every time I talk about what happened that they couldn't imagine how I feel or what they would do. I don't want or need them to- NO ONE should have to. That's the point; no one should ever have to live with this kind of pain and we need to help one another. Just show the care and consideration you would want someone to show you if you had to walk the road I do. That's all. I'm not sure what is okay and what isn't okay for me to be. I need to know what to be now and help to figure that out.

I am trying to live a life that doesn't quite fit. I feel like I've been given someone else's shoes that looks sort of like some I used to own and told to go wherever I want... but the shoes think we're going somewhere else that the old owner used to go. So I will trip, I will fall. I will take wrong paths, I will start and stop again. But I will break these shoes in and eventually the path they tread will be mine.