How do you admit to people that you’re struggling?
It’s so much easier to just say you’re okay to anyone who asks and keep a brave face on. But deep down, when you are alone in bed at night it all catches up with you.
It’s coming up 3 whole years since Ira was killed this December. People say that you heal more and more as time passes, but I honestly am not sure I will ever believe this. While it’s true that you become more accustomed to the pain and it becomes more a part of your life and who you are – it almost aches and hurts more than it did in the first few months. The first few months are numbness, shock, and endless people surrounding you. They are also still close to when you last saw your loved one. Now, nearly 3 years later I am struggling with the amount of holes I feel in my life that Ira would have once filled. I imagine where we would both be now if he was still here. I imagine what it would be like to still have a complete family and not have to feel the painstaking emptiness when with my parents. As time passes it also becomes so much further away from when we last saw Ira. His presence becomes more and more of a distant memory and more memories are made without him there.
I have numbed a lot of the pain this year but this past weekend really brought up a lot of grief for me. I went to one of Ira’s best friends 21st’s and when it came to the speeches, a few people started by mentioning Ira and the fact that he couldn’t make it – for the first time in a while I bawled my eyes out in public and I couldn’t stop. My mum and I also talked a lot about the funeral, the burial, and what happened to Ira (these are things we normally step around and avoid mentioning as it hurts far too much) and this made me really reflect upon my grief and how much I have been avoiding it. It’s not that I want to avoid it, it’s more that I physically and emotionally cannot cope with fully allowing myself to feel everything and comprehend everything. My body just cannot cope with it at all. We also found some video tapes of Ira as a 1 year old and seeing myself and Ira together as kids broke me down – who would have thought 16 years later that this beautiful little boy who brought so much light to everyone’s lives would have his life ended by such a tragic accident and we would have to live with this nightmare? It just makes me so so sad. The past few days I have cried so much for what was and what could have been. I have also had thoughts that it should have been me who went, not Ira. It sounds pathetic and attention seeking, but it’s true. He was younger, far more positive, and filled with so much potential and motivation to reach his goals. He would have lived such a full life had he still been here to do so. I wish more than anything in this world that he could still be here today. Words can’t even explain how much I miss him. I dreamed about him the other night and he was cracking up with a big grin on his face, I woke up crying and grasped into the thin air wishing I could give him a big hug. It’s the little things like watching someone you love laugh or just being able to give them a hug that you miss you so much when that person is gone. It’s just so hard looking at photos and videos and knowing that this is the only way you will only be able to see that person ever again. It’s just so final and heartbreaking.
I don’t know if I’m struggling with my grief for Ira more than usual lately or if it’s just that I’m allowing myself to feel it more than I had been. I have been feeling down and struggling with a few other things as well, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. I feel like I have lost who I was and I no longer truly know who I am now. I don’t know what I want or where I’m going in life. Currently my way of dealing with how I feel is to just drink, eat, pretend like everything’s okay, and sleep. I haven’t been very open to anyone about how I’ve really been feeling deep down and I don’t think I’ve been honest with myself either. I feel like I’ve been living my life day to day with no real drive or passion to reach my full potential and actually live my life to the fullest – and I know Ira would be so disappointed in me for this. But it’s just so hard to know where to start to change how I have been for the past three years. It’s like someone has sucked everything out of me and all I am is the outer shell of my body. I get up every day and go to work, I come home – I sleep, I drink my weekends away, I bottle my feelings up, I avoid situations that make me go out of my comfort zone, I shy away from opportunities, and I don’t go out of my way to meet new people. I know a lot of this is definitely centred around losing Ira and the way I have coped with my grief, but I also know that I can’t make it the reason for everything and at the end of the day this comes down to me. I am scared that I will never come out of this space I have gotten myself into. If anyone else has been feeling this some way I would love to hear from you.