Enough Now

This post has been a long time coming, but I haven't really realized it until now.  My days have been really tough for me lately, and I have been trying to figure out why.  Some people would tell me it's because school is starting up and that is making me nervous.   Others would say it's the additional stress of Mike trying to find a job, or of wanting to get pregnant again.  I wanted to push it on the Royal Baby or North West.  I wanted to say it was because reality makes grief so heavy.  I wanted to say so many things.  And while all of these things surely haven't helped, it is not the real reason life has been so hard.  

It's because I have been clinging so tightly to something that doesn't belong to me.  I have been running around trying to hold on to a memory - hoping that by clutching it so close to my chest, I might be able to find the joy every other mother has.   But, I'm not every other mother.   I am the mother of a daughter who is dead.   I will never be like every other mother.   I will always be different.  My relationship with my daughter will always be momentary.

I have been shoving her in people's faces.  Every conversation is about her. Almost every facebook post.  Clearly, every blog post.  I am offended when people don't bring her up in conversation.  I have put her at the absolute center of my life and I have been spinning around her like a tornado. Maybe that's what mothers are supposed to do - put their child first - but, again, I am not a run of the mill mother.  I am a mother of loss.  You can't put death on a pedestal.   You can't redirect your life so it revolves around a ghost.  That's why everything is so heavy.   Why I feel like I am being crushed beneath a hundred elephants sitting on a wall of bricks.   It's because I am trying to hold onto something that doesn't belong on this earth.   I need to let her go. 

I need it to be okay to have an afternoon with friends where I don't talk about her.  I need it to be okay to go a few days without writing - without pulling her back to me again and again and again.   I'm not talking about forgetting about her.  I'm not talking about moving on or "getting over it".   I've already made peace with the fact that I will always miss her, always love her with more heart than I have.   What I am saying is that it is no longer healthy for me to continually and consciously focus on her death.  At the beginning, it was necessary in order for me to process what had happened and to learn to deal with my emotions.   Now, it has just become a morbid dance, where I am simply twirling madly in an empty ballroom.  I am like Miss Havisham in Great Expectations who can't take off her wedding dress.   

To illustrate my point, I found a clip from the movie Love, Actually.  Before Keira Knightly swashbuckled with Johnny Depp and Andrew Lincoln became a zombie killer, they played lovers never meant to be in this adorable independent film.  Andrew's character has loved Keira for a long time, but she has just married his best friend.   Watch the clip all the way to the end and then come back.

"Enough, now.  Enough."  he says as he walks away.  He's said what he needs to say.  He has spent enough of his time wishing and hoping for something he can't have - and now it is time for him to focus his efforts elsewhere.  He won't stop loving her, but he will stop pining for her.  He will stop clutching at a dream that isn't his.

Kenley is dead.  I love her with all of my heart.  I will love her until the day I die.  That will never change.   What will change - what has to change - is how I go about loving her.  I can't keep holding her memory so tightly to me.  I can't keep swirling every thought I have around her name.   It's killing me. I can still honor her.  I will honor her by living my life with vigor.  I will honor her by making decisions for my future and not because of my past. 

Long story short, the blog is not going to be my focus.  Not anymore.   I can't do it.  I can't keep dwelling on death.   I love Kenley too much to turn her into a martyr.  She's not a cause.  She's not a blog.  She's not a facebook post.   She is my daughter.    

I have said what I needed to say.  I have written thousands of bloody words with my broken heart and I have come to the end of the page - at least in this book.   As time goes on, as life goes on, there may be more I need to say.  I'll still post if I feel a major change in myself I need to document.  When I get pregnant again, I am sure I'll need to revisit my old stomping grounds to keep myself sane.  I'll probably update every now and then when I finish a fun project or work on a charity event.  The blog will continue, just not in the same manner is has been.  I will no longer center my life around these words, around my grief, and around her death.

I have to open up my palm and let that pink balloon float away into the bright and beautiful sky.  Fly High, Little Ninja.  Fly High.