Throughout this mental breakdown, the one thing I have noticed that has been consistent is that I miss Jude. I miss him more than I ever thought I would. I remember there were times that he was suffering so much that I thought it would be better if he passed with dignity, prayers, and peace. Yet when he was gone, I couldn't really imagine the "quiet" in my life. I yearned to hold him again and to just have him near me. I actually still remember his exact sweet smell more than ten years later.
I am also watching myself age, and I think for the first time I am really understanding how quickly life moves. The things I once thought were so important don't seem nearly as important anymore. The years don't slow down, people change, our bodies change, our families grow, and eventually the people we love most become memories we would give anything to touch one more time.
Maybe that is what all of this is teaching me. Life isn't meant to be perfect, and it certainly isn't meant to be held together every minute of every day. We are going to lose people. We are going to break. We are going to get older. We are going to have days when we don't recognize ourselves.
But we are still here.
And maybe the point isn't to spend the rest of our lives trying to avoid pain. Maybe it's to feel the things that matter, love the people who are still here, stop wasting so much time on things that don't matter, and be brave enough to keep living even when part of your heart is somewhere you can never get back to.
I can't bring Jude back. I can't stop time. I can't make the years disappear or make life less complicated. But I can still choose what I do with the time I have left.
And I think I finally understand that there is a difference between surviving a life and actually living one. However, that doesn't mean I am not tired.
I think sometimes
you can hold everything together
for so long
that your mind eventually says,
enough.
And that's what happened to me.
I didn't have one thing that broke me.
It was everything.
The things I never dealt with.
The things I thought I was over.
The people I lost.
The things I couldn't fix.
The pressure to keep being okay
when I wasn't.
Eventually,
I wasn't okay.
And honestly,
that scared the hell out of me.
Because when you're used to being the strong one,
you don't know what to do
when you're the one who needs someone
to hold you together.
I cried.
I got angry.
I shut down.
I questioned everything.
I missed people I can't bring back.
I wondered why some things still hurt
after all these years.
And I realized something:
Maybe I wasn't failing.
Maybe I was finally feeling
everything I'd been too busy surviving to feel.
