Joy Cometh

Two of my favorite words in the Bible.  I am clinging to Psalm 30:5 that says....weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.  I haven't seen that morning in over three weeks, but despite the picture of the last eight years, I know that for everything there's a season and this season will just have to end, eventually.  In the meantime, I'm still struggling just to exist, just to simply be, while I try to figure out what my place is in this world. 

Today, I had to take care of another thing that required a death certificate.  It is already hard for me to drive the car because it was the last place I saw my boy alive.  To drive down the road with a death certificate in the spot that my boy always sat is just so very wrong.  It is surreal.  I've taken to driving like a normal person because I'm so aware that I am actually not aware, not really present in my surroundings, that I want to take extra precautions so I don't hurt anyone.  It was because of that very thing that a bicyclist got to keep his body intact the other day.  It was totally his fault and he is very fortunate that I didn't go when I could've, but hitting him would've undone me. 

Everything I do feels like an out of body experience.  I'm functioning and, probably, pretty well, given the situation, but nothing feels right or good or normal or the same.  Eating is one of those things.  I have zero interest in doing it.  Not one thing sounds good or tastes good.  I eat merely to give my body some kind of fuel to function.  My husband has been doing this for years, a byproduct of depression.  I'm very picky.  VERY.  To care so little about what I eat that I'm not worried about my pickiness is almost worrisome.  Some people can't deal with grief and they eat.  I cannot deal with grief and I do not eat.  When I went through that hard time in 2007, I lost 45 pounds in 10 weeks.  It almost becomes a game for me.  Food has a weird relationship with people who battle their weight.  I'm an angry eater, odd because if you know me, you know I have no issue whatsoever with not keeping my anger bottled up.  It's obviously not the healthy way to handle it, though, because looking at me will tell you how much of my life I've wasted on stuffing that anger back down.  So, not eating for any reason other than to give me sustenance feels sorta out of this world.  I've had exactly one time in the last 24 days that something sounded good to me and, oddly enough, it was the night after my boy's memorial.  The prior six days I'd had exactly one meal and by meal I mean a piece of pizza.  The rest of the time I survived on pieces of cheese.

Listening to music.  The CD in the car is the one that was playing the last day I saw Brandon.  I listen numbly.  I even sing along.  But, I will be sitting at a light and start crying.  Brandon loved music so much, a love he got from me.  Sound is my most precious, valued sense because I love music with my entire being, straight through to my soul.  Not now, though, something else that doesn't feel right in my world. 

Going to the movies, the laundry, the dishes, the recycle bin, I could go on.  It's a huge list of things that don't seem to fit.  I know it's normal.  Brandon had a role in my life that has been replaced with a gigantic hole, until we all adjust and find a new normal.  I don't want a new normal, I want my old normal.  (You see my simultaneous acceptance and denial?  It's a new theme)  I don't want to feel like I don't belong anywhere, that I'm cut off from the world.  I want to do something I did before Brandon died and enjoy doing it.  I simply can't fathom that happening today.  Tomorrow maybe.  Maybe not.  I hope I don't have to go find all new things to fill my life so that I don't cry over everything that was in my life before I lost my son.  I don't think so, right?  To me, that wouldn't be joy....or maybe it will be, I'm not sure....joy needs to quit being a slacker before I get permanently lost in this world.