Moving.

Dear Isaac,
Life has become a series of surreal experiences and synchronicity’s since you left. I have become a person transfixed by each; acutely aware and convinced they come as messages and gifts directly from you to me. I am so grateful, it feels like time spent together and I cherish and savor these moments. Having always been easy to distract, I find myself now utterly tuned in and profoundly connected to the natural world around me and to the minutiae in the design of the divine. 
However, I’m really struggling to connect with human beings. Not for lack of trying, dear boy. I do reach out– but I feel incredibly vulnerable and that leads me to feel chronically disappointed in myself for not being able to act like or just be a normal person. I keep waiting to have an authentic moment in the presence of another, but each time I come close I either recoil or send my representative self out there to handle the awkwardness. This always results in me not really knowing what’s going on out there– what’s being said, how I’m behaving– because I’m not really there.
I was growing weary of the strength I’ve had to muster to endure this new life, the life without you. For awhile, I suppose, I felt strong and strong felt somehow purposeful. But then it just began to feel impossible to maintain. Let me be clear, Isaac: this was not about depression or despair. It’s about all the pretending I do to show that I’m ‘ok’ or ‘normal’ or steady or stable or interested or relaxed or moving forward. The hoops I jump through to make sure no one is worried about me. It’s just so exhausting.
I realize more everyday that I will survive your death. While impossible to consider this into the future, day to day I can see how to put one foot in front of the next, even if I’m shakey in the knees.
I don’t know how I think it should look or feel. I don’t have some idea of what would feel better. I only know that this is so fucking uncomfortable that sometimes I just want to yell “I didn’t ask for this! It isn’t fair!”. But I don’t do that– and what I really mean is– I MISS YOU SO BAD and I STILL CANT FUCKING BELIEVE THIS IS REAL LIFE.
I honestly think I’ve contorted myself into all these uncomfortable positions in an effort to avoid being pissed off with you. For so long since your death I have feared that you and I were both too fragile for that to ever be possible. But gee whiz, Isaac, your death has really done a number on my sense of self. I think it’s safe to say this now without feeling like a meanie or a helpless victim. 
I’ve held onto the terror that this is all my fault, that everyone who knows us feels this way, that you did, that I didn’t show you or teach you or love you enough, even though that all seems impossible. And it is this fear that keeps me from really being fully alive and sharing my life with those I loved before all this. It is this fear that has been keeping me numb and rootless.
I’ve been trying so hard to allow myself to feel. I’ve been chipping away at all the things that were helping to keep me comfortably numb. And it has opened the floodgates, for sure. The levy has broken. 
So that now, what I see pretty clearly, ahead of me BUT ALSO behind me, are long, long roads from where I am right now. This shows me that I AM moving. And I guess that is enough for now, my son.
WILY, to infinity and beyond,

Mama

*from ‘The Rainbow Comes & Goes’