Sometimes you just get stuck, paralysed in that moment, that moment you've played over and over and over in your mind... The day your world shattered and was changed forever. Your relationships with family, with friends, with people you once didn't care for and with perfect strangers.
The balance of missed opportunities, regrets and sadness was all redressed. Your perception and perspective on literally everything and everyone was permanently and profoundly altered. People talk of moments that shook them to their very core, but it's really not something you can fully comprehend until it happens to you. You can't appreciate the impact until you've been hit.
The pain never goes away, never morphs into anything different. You just get better at dealing with it, masking it, controlling it, keeping under wraps, until a more opportune moment presents itself. You handle it, with increasing amounts of restraint, until people, people who don't truly know you, are convinced that you are over the worst.
What's really happened is that you know life goes on. You are painfully aware, even from the outset, that for everyone else (not directly affected themselves) nothing has changed, except you. Although sometimes they may not even notice how much you've changed, or whether you view them differently, a definitive shift has occured in your world and maybe you and select few are privvy to this. The world has a void that can never be filled, at least for a few affected individuals.
Where do the years go, what has happened since then and now. Is it coping? Is it getting on? Is it making the most of every day available?
Keeping positive, being fulfilled, making others happy... In some small way making up for the void, not filling it, it can't be filled, since there is no substitute, no replacement. That's what's so hard to comprehend for most.
Every so often it creeps in, that dark matter, regardless of how much you try to keep it at bay, remain busy, move forward, and so you weep, mourn, scream, shout, whatever gives you certain momentary release, until the next time.
Yet, in between, you still manage to smile, to pass on joy and make the best of each day, with as much light inside as is humanly possible to muster. Every brand new day springs hope eternal, because you're still here and you want it with a passion, you know the only thing that matters is that you remember and that you're present in your life. You show up each and every morning with something to be thankful for.
It's perfectly acceptable to be sad every now and again, to break down and let the grief flow through you. It's ok to mourn a loss, but not let it master you. It's understandably normal for it to hurt, and keep hurting, as long as you accept the truth.
You think of what you have and what others have in you, which in itself generates a lightness of being, and allows you a degree of peace in your torn, but mending soul.