The Middle Finger

Some days I wake up and it feels like Life is shitting all over me. I crawl into my closet, don my T-shirt and crawl back into bed. I mean this both literally and figuratively. This past weekend was an example. I was not having it...

Fortunately, there are other days, though much fewer and farther between right now, where I wake up at the ass crack of dawn to bust out a run. Where Life is throwing lemons at me and I'm just grabbing them, stomping all over them, drinking vodka straight out the bottle, throwing up my middle finger to everything around me and screaming "EFF all of this!"

These are the days I try to prove something to myself. I try to prove that I can run farther than I thought, I can get out of bed when I don't want to, I can go to work and get done what needs to be done, and I can be good at it again. They are the days when I forget all the bad decisions, all the negative energy over the last many months and I just choose for that morning, or that day, or that week - however long it lasts - I choose to do the absolute best I can to go kick ass.

They are the days when I hold the necklaces around my neck and whisper "Watch me Sweetie. I wish you were here but I'm doing this for you." and I'm proud of what I accomplished instead of exhausted and disappointed by the wrecked individual that I've spent so much time trapped inside. This usually comes when I've had enough. When I've fought flashbacks and day terrors and nightmares all weekend. When I haven't slept well. When another piece of information deals a new blow. I get fed up with it all but instead of retreating, I somehow manage to grasp ahold of hope and struggle forward, even if it's not what I want and even if it's painful.

I am not stronger one day or another. I am not "grieving" or "not grieving"....I will be left with a sore heart, with an ache of what I couldn't ever have with Ryan, for the rest of my life. It's just that for whatever reason, on one day versus another, I find enough energy and resolve to make that day different. Instead of being worn out by another "no" or by another person's silence; instead of being disappointed by another brick wall, instead of hating myself and judging myself and wondering what I did wrong to be discarded by friends and family and strangers --- on these days I remind myself that they don't matter.

And I make my day count.