Everybody has problems. Everybody has pain. Everyone has different life experiences and ways of dealing with them. I feel like people think I'm doing it wrong, all of it.

My mom's death has transformed itself into an actual physical wound. The difference between this loss and a flesh wound, is that there is no single point of impact. You can feel it throughout your entire body.

Like any wound, it's been bandaged over and over again. If I leave it alone, I can barely feel it. I've managed to numb the pain with various distractions and "medicines", but these things are only temporary.

The wound has been reopened and re-injured. I'll stumble into something and tear into it. Other have unintentionally bumped into it, and all of the sudden the pain is searing back into me, the trauma blazing back to life.

It's my own personal broken record, and I can almost feel the eyes rolling around me when it jumps and skips back to the hardest times. How can I move forward? How can I fix it? How can I be expected to be okay?

I've met several new people lately, but typically in the friend of a friend sense. Every single person has been made aware of my "situation" before I ever lay eyes on them. I have become the girl who took care of her mother until she died. The girl with the dead Mom. The girl with the nightmares. The girl with the drama. My sadness has become my identity without my permission.

I don't want to be the one who is pitied. I don't want to be the one who is fragile. I don't want to be the one who is avoided. It's an endless cycle of walking on eggshells, both by me and those around me. Those around me tread carefully in an effort not to trigger the sad girl, whereas I watch myself carefully to make sure I don't make anyone the least bit uncomfortable. None of us are being real, none of us are truly existing in each others presence. Nobody is being themselves.

It's a lonely place, here inside my head. I don't know where else to go. I have to be someone else in every setting. How long can I keep that up? I've been a thousand different people over the last ten years.

I do my laundry at my Dad's house. The laundry room is one of the few rooms in the house that hasn't been cleaned out yet. My mom's things are everywhere, including her written instructions on how to do laundry. Every time I do down there, I can hear her, feel her, even smell her. When I start going down the basement stairs, I can hear her calling to me, asking me to carry the laundry baskets up to her room.

I have to reopen the wound over and over again. I have to actually remind myself that she's gone, and there is no later. The things she looked forward to will NOT happen. The trip she and I planned to Hawaii will not take place. She is gone. I have to remind myself to remember that again and again and again, and it's just as fresh as it always was. It's a brand new pain, an intense sting. There's no way to explain it to onlookers who seem to resent me for it.

How can you lose someone like that and then forget they're gone? Maybe it's a defense mechanism. But it seems like pure sabotage to have to realize it again and again. It's murderously horrible.

I want to be around someone who will allow me to not be okay, who won't ask questions every time they see a tear, and just allow me to be sad when the sadness hits. I don't need to be interrogated, I don't need to be criticized for 'keeping it all inside', let me come to you, don't force me out. Hold me.

I've written before about how my Grandma told my mom not to be afraid to pray specifically. My mom prayed for a man to come into her life, down to the details. She got everything she wanted in my Dad, all the way down to his double stainless steel kitchen sink. I have my list. It's very specific, just like hers was. Is it possible? Yes. Will he want me? That would be the question. I can't imagine anyone wanting to be a part of this mess that I've become 'til death do us part'... but there's a plan, and I'm a part of it. So I've been told...

I feel like the life I've been waiting my whole life to start living has already started. This is it, now what? Make the best of it. You only have the one life, so I hope I'm able to do something extraordinary with it. Some say I already have. All I've done is love everyone I can as much as I can. I don't know any other way.

It takes a lot for me to let someone in completely. To allow myself to really truly love them. When and if that ever happens, it will be forever. That's something to look forward to, I suppose. I look forward to anything that means the ease of isolation. That's why I make stupid decisions about stupid people. Blah.

That would be a novel in and of itself. Speaking of novels, I need to write one. Nearing the end... and maybe the beginning? That would be lovely...