Throughout this journey I cannot tell you how many times I have heard the statement, "Your a strong woman/mom/person/girl, etc." It's a statement I have grown to hate.
Before loosing Sam I took that as the greatest compliment. After all, that's how I was raised. Strong, independent woman. I still am, just in a different sense. I know I am a mom that knows what she wants for her children. Does that really make me strong?
What does "strong" mean?
Who determines the perimeters of "strong"?
I hate this phrase more now after loosing Sam than anything. I take it as a threat to my grief and where I stand in my grieving journey. I know people don't intend it to be that way, but, that's what it feels like every time someone says it to me.
I may appear to be strong because I have to lie. I have to lie to make people think I'm not about to crumble.
You see if I let people in to what is really going on then they hop on the concern train and pester out of good love and heart. I don't like to be pestered, I need to figure things out for myself. Hardheaded, stubborn they call it.
Sometimes I just want to be weak and ball up into the fetal position and cry for days on end. But I can't I have to be a mom and wife.
Now that my second son is in the NICU, I have heard this phrase resurface again and again. I hate it, I really do. I'm not "strong", I'm a mother. You have no clue how I am behind this facade. I plow through what I have to to make it and crumble when it's least expected. Being here I am inundate with emotions that have to be kept in a tight-lid jar. If I let them go, I could risk being separated from my only living son. People here "worry" about me and my well being because they know my fragile past, I've only mentioned it a thousand times. We are the only parents here that are ALWAYS here.
We're here because of Sam. We're here because of our experience with the unthinkable.
We live the unthinkable.
Don't tell me it's impossible.
Don't tell me "he'll be fine".
You don't know that. Who made you fucking God?
We live too far to miss a possible goodbye if it came to that. I never got a hello with Sam. How could I risk a missed goodbye with my second son. Sam died alone. If it came to that with Angelo, I don't want him to take his last breath without one of us being here. Sam has taught me every second of life is precious. If I can witness and behold every second of it before it's swept from my feet, you'd better be damned that I'm not going to miss that.
I want to turn to faith. In this hard time.
But I have none. I obviously want something to hang on to because I'm mentioning it, but I hold it at arms length. I feel like I've been shit on so many times, someones got to be to blame for it. I haven't been able to figure out all the horrible things I've done that could have brought this punishment on. Why me?
Why us?
Don't start reciting the bullshit line,
"Everything happens for a reason" or "God only gives you what you can handle."
Bullshit!
And this is your God? The one who says my son is in Heaven. Why would I trust a creator that has only shit on me when I needed "Him" most?
It's for the strong folk. The ones that are able to release their worries and pain to the higher. It's the weak that are too stubborn to release from the white-knuckled grip.
It's all a game. This talk about strength. It's what people tell you when they have nothing else to say to someone that's in a shady place too murky to travel themselves.
It's a game for the grieving and bleeding. It's not strength you see before you, it's a mom just trying to hold it together long enough to cry alone and release the pain when permissible.
It's just a battle of wits for me. Don't tell me I'm strong, it's only hurtful to my grief.
