Feels like living in a time warp. I go right back to 2021. I can’t sleep tonight. Too many recycled thoughts that just won’t put themselves to bed. I work to so hard to be so many things. But no matter how hard I try to get out of this sadness, it always finds its way back. I put it in a box. I tell it that it doesn’t belong here. I forgive. I honor it. I feel it. We say his name. Talk about our favorite memories. We cry together as a family. These babies who didn’t deserve to lose a brother and have to navigate all things death.

He should be here.

Just when I feel like I can breathe, I get berated by unnamed, and told I have no reason to be sad, I should be over it, I have no place in this grief. Dig after dig after dig. It hurts. And then I’m right back here. Wondering if the life I lived was all in my head. Didn’t really happen how I remember. I feel like a crazy person.

I know I’m not crazy. I have to talk myself down from that. I can’t begin to piece together the anger that gets thrown at me. The vileness. But If I call it what it is, I am the villain. They are the saint. After it all. I never really knew that person. Yet I am still the easy target. I think about all the things I could have said. The buttons I could have pushed. But I didn’t. I answer calmly but with shaking hands. If I go low, unnamed will go lower. It’s a sick game I’ve been caught in too many times with them. Yet, if they read this they would call it all lies for attention.

No one talks about their grief being stolen. Some people are so toxic that they think you don’t deserve to remember. Everyone grieves differently. We’ve all heard that because it’s true. But no one should get to tell you how you grieve. I’ve done the work. I understand the waves. I know when to feel, where I feel it, and how to transmute it. This time, it spilled over onto my babies. They do not deserve that. I could overanalyze why it gets thrown at me like this and I have, but now it’s about building a boundary no matter how tall. No matter how uncomfortable. Self respect. The more you draw the line, the easier it gets. But you have to draw the line, highlight it, put a neon sign next to it. Whatever that looks like for you, for me.

Right now, I just need to get out of my head. Tomorrow is a new day. I’ll keep busy with getting my little cuties on the bus, staring at all the clothes in my closet wondering why I have nothing to wear, work, running kids to and from sports, turning starter into bread, listening to the audio book I started today. Living my life. And then the next time the mud starts to get thrown, I’ll build my boundary higher and hope that next October feels a little softer.