Light and dark…or just shadows

‘Where do you find the strength?’ people ask me. Or ‘you cope so well’ I’m told.

And yes, perhaps I do, maybe I’ve found some strength and can cope.

I know what helps me…surrounding myself with the kids, sometimes chatting-sometimes not, organizing my house (it’s surprisingly therapeutic to sort the cup cupboard…again), listening to my Albie playlist, cuddling his bear.

I’m coping, I’m might even agree I’m strong at times. 

But to be completely honest the feeling in my stomach is one of such dread and heaviness that everyday I work out at 7am how many hours til bed time. 

And at first I thought that that itself makes no sense, through the night all those feelings of sadness and fear and longing for him are still there, if not even not more intense, but the difference is at least I don’t have to feel them whilst smiling and passing the time of day. 

I can let that darkness surround me, much like the night sky, there is no need to look for light, or be the light! 

To be something or look for something all the time is so very tiring in an already tiring world.

The nights are hard but at least they are real. I’m free to feel it all. 

And then it’s morning again and I find the strength. Of course I do, I have to. To get through the day, to survive. And while the light is a welcome relief and it feels so good to chat and laugh and play…I still also cant wait til night.

Light and dark are both so needed for me, otherwise everything’s just weirdly in the shadows, neither happy or sad, neither living or just surviving. Just in the shadows.

So I guess I’ll just keep doing both, embrace the light that fills the days, I need that light so badly, but also greet the darkness each night like the friend it is, the one that’s says to ‘rest now’, and in so many more ways than just sleeping. 

Maybe, just maybe, between the two-the light and the dark-I’ll be able to live this live this life, without my beautiful boy. 

(I wonder if he would have been a chef?!)