A New Type of Functioning

Day 1001.

Another grieving parent posts a question on the GRASP site:

They note the posts of so much grief and despair, “Are we all now as sick as our lost children? Does anyone function, and how?”

My motive to throw myself to reply is unclear, but my instinct was to give him hope. 

I replied that 1,001 days in, that I mostly function and listed my therapies and this journal as part of that.

The reaching out, the sharing, and the authentic reports of my path, as published in my journal, have helped me order my emotional chaos and the feed back that it helps others not feel isolated, helps me too.

But I was clear to report that some days, even I am fucked.

When I have the flu, I can’t recall what it is to feel well, and vice versa.

When I am emotionally doing well, as now, I cannot recall feeling fucked, and vice versa. 

I am impatient with the incapacitation of grief.

Is this the perceived impatience that we sense around us actually coming from others wishing for us to be well again?

Now that they feel so much better, they can’t recall their own devastation in their loss of Luke.

My need to soothe this man’s desperate quest gave me a new reflection about my condition -  

That I was actually doing well (which feels alien) and that others may never perceive (I hope) what being this sad (in my wellness) can ever be.

I can be both sad and functional.

A new type of functioning.