Riding the storm

It's been so long. Right? Or was it just yesterday? So long since I've had the desire to write, the time to write, the feelings to write. 

Has it really been 4 years? Today? 

Today, we visited the cemetery and I watched Isaac put "flowers" on his brother's  headstone. It was beautiful and devastating. 

The absolute hardest part about the last 4 years has been the inability to break down. I cannot. If you have children, you know why. God knew by blessing me with a rainbow baby, that it would consume my time. He needs me. I cannot break down. 

That's the thing with me. Grief has no happy medium. I'm either drowning in my misery or the strongest damn person you've ever met. 

Even though the first year was full of support, I was alone. My husband I grieved. If our situation was a tornado, we were in the dead center. I cried every single day. All day. On and off. It rained or it poured. There was no clearing. The sun never shined. The storm picked me up and threw me around like a rag doll. My world had been shattered and there was no safe area. No shelter.  the next storm was seconds away. I waited for it and sometimes I chased it! 

Today, I have to run from it. I cannot let the wind of that storm pick me up and throw me around. I have to find the shelter and stare at it from a distance. I explain to Isaac the whirlwind and the tragedy of it all but we just watch it. He knows his brother is in heaven with God but he doesn't know that his mother used to ride the storm and let it rip her to shreds. And that's ok. He doesn't need to. 

He doesn't need to know that I would put myself in the most darkest and dangerous spot in the storm and lay there. Calling upon it to "take me away". The stiff drinks at 3 pm. The hours of rocking and listening to sad music. The deep and dark injuries I would just ask for. The way I used to stare at my belly in the mirror and secretly cuss at it for ruining my life but then in the next moment, watch phantom kicks that my mind created. It was the closest thing to full blown insanity I've ever experienced and yet, I dove into it head first knowing that I was letting it consume me.  I needed to be close to my storm. Aka my grief. 

All Isaac needs to know is that he is my rainbow and that I came out alive.