On my drive to pick up my son after work, I was thinking about my post from earlier.  I was thinking about grief.  How sometimes, I just forget all about it.  I get wrapped up in life, T, work, the kids, the house… and then some days, it’s all I can think about.

Acute Grief.

Only a few weeks after Ben had passed away, a doctor diagnosed me as having Acute Grief.  I remember wanting to punch him in the face.  What do you expect?!  He’d asked me what I’d been going through from a stress level and I broke down right there in the office.  You see… I died that day.  The woman I was… she’s gone.  Left in her place was a shell; a look alike.  Acute grief.  I’ve looked it up.  It’s a real thing, and I won’t lie, I’ve related to most of the symptoms (physically and emotionally).  He wasn’t wrong.

Someone asked me why I chose the tagline for this blog that I did.

“Ramblings of a girl masquerading as a woman…”

Because that’s what I am.  A girl in a shell of a woman, who is learning how to live again.  This year will mark six years since that day.  The new me… is essentially a little girl…I’ve had to re-learn how to breathe, how to trust, how to love.  Every day I grow just a little bit more.  Every day, I add to my goals and dreams for this new life.  Some days, I’ll work toward those dreams with gusto and some days, I’m timid and maybe even a little afraid.

Interesting how I’m just as vulnerable now as I was as a child.  Vulnerability.  We think when we’re children that we’ll get away from it.  But in reality, it is only in adulthood that we learn to accept our vulnerabilities for what they are.  And in doing that, they become strengths.

Goodnight Neverland.  Talk again soon.