Fear, Fight, Faith

 

My dearest Sunshine,

How are you? I have missed you extremely these past few weeks. Dealing with loss is not really something I am good at. This past week has been a standing testament to that. You might be aware that my grandmother and I never had a smooth relationship. I do miss her, regardless of how rocky that bridge was.

I took some time writing to you as I needed space to process how I felt. These last few weeks have been relatively slow, boring and sleep deprived. From constantly running around last week and finding peace at the cemetery, this has been an interesting turn of events.

A few things I have learnt and realized this past week is to have unwavering faith in yourself. Despite the challenges that life oh so lovingly throws at you, never forget the faith and the fight.

As someone who has constantly struggled with loss, failure, forgetfulness and regret. All I can say is, fight the good fight. Keep the faith. I may have lifted these words from the Bible, yet they make so much sense. Fight the fight, yet fight the good fight. A fight that you can be proud of. I am going to sound like an old person here. But fight. No matter what happens, fight. Everyone says look for peace, silence, simplicity. When all you know is chaos, what then?

It’s been a bit of a drag these past few days. I’m struggling to keep myself alive. The only change I make consistently is with my nail colour every week. Have I told you about the time I almost ended up having a meltdown in a traffic signal? Most of my memories are of places where I haven’t yet bawled my eyes out. I hope today’s letter isn’t all depressing, I promise that there is a silver lining to this dark and gloomy cloud.

I miss my zone of comfort; my warm blanket now has a gaping hole in it. I cried over that in the middle of the night, cursing at myself for not being careful. My slipper has been stitched over at least four times now, because I refuse to wear something else. I hoard things, scrunchies, old papers, dead flowers, clothes, memories, pain. I collect it, meticulously, label it, and I shove it. Deep into the bowels of my drawers, spines of my books and into myself. Chewing on the painful memories like a cow chews its cud. I try to remove myself from this vicious cycle of swallowing regurgitated pain but what can you say to someone who picks at scabs just because it healed too fast?

I am trying to change Sunshine, and hopefully all this pain will lead to a path of healing. You have to heal alone. Your body has to heal on its own. Without medicine, without painkillers, without any sort of external help. That’s true healing. Or that is what the world says.

I want to be surrounded by love, friendship, security but finding all of this in this world is quite the herculean task. So, you do it alone. My tears dry faster these days, so fast that they never come out. When they do come out it morphs itself into an awkwardly loud laugh. A laugh that I stifle and swallow. My voice is also a problem. It gets loud at the most inconvenient times. People tell me ‘Lower your volume’ ‘were you born with a microphone?’ How do I tell people I was never spoken to as a child? I was always alone, talking to myself? Now when I get excited my voice automatically gets loud. These days I just tend to keep quiet and to myself. Wrapping up the bubbling personality that is so injured and bruised that I am scared of revealing it these days.

But like I said before, I am still holding out hope. I hope in things unseen and unfelt, waiting and yearning for the darkness to pass. The night is always the darkest before dawn, and I cannot wait to see my precious Sunshine. 

Longing for you

Jess