i can't tell if i'm in a funk or just in overdrive

I can’t tell if I’m numb or feeling so much that it’s all just become a muddy brown. 

I’m not helping myself by keeping myself so distracted. I need to be alone with my thoughts but I’m just so exhausted by them. 

I’m not sad, I’m grieving. I never ever knew there could be a difference but there is and it’s a stark one. 

I reached for a tshirt last night and my hand came up holding your work polo. I’d gone searching for a shirt of yours, it was your presence I was seeking, but something about being faced with your daily uniform, the shirt I see you in every time I see you in one of my dreams, the shirt I folded hundreds of times and placed in your drawers, the shirt that made up 75% of our laundry… I just stared at it. It gutted me. 

Today I had a meeting about Axl’s IEP. I drove to it alone and sat through it alone and now I sit here thinking about it without someone to talk to about it. Without you. I’ll never have a conversation about “our” sons with anyone again, because the only person I shared them with is now gone. I’m so lucky to have so many people here in Vermont to share them with, but it’s been so much in so little time. For 4 years we were Axl’s whole world, and then in one year he loses you, he gains a brother, starts school for the first time, moves to a new state, starts a new school, and suddenly has to answer to so many different adults with different rules and levels of understanding his speech. I’m worried about him. 

I feel guilty that his fine motor skills need work. That feels like my fault. We didn’t practice them enough. They’re a little worried that he’s immature emotionally- that he gets so upset over small things. I guess that’s true but he recovers so quickly and does such a good job regulating himself that I never saw it as a problem. They weren’t saying it was a problem either, it’s just so uncomfortable having your child’s weaknesses pointed out. And I feel like I totally flubbed talking about his strengths, like I didn’t accurately describe him at all. I should have said he’s amazing, he’s so creative, he amazes me every day, he’s so smart. I said those things but not in the ways I wanted to. I just get so flustered and tongue tied on the spot like that. Pete was always better at that, and I’m still navigating doing things like this without him.

And now I’m crying again. This has all just been so much. I feel like I have whiplash. I feel like a completely different person than I was 4 months ago. I’ve had to become someone new overnight to adapt to this new world and I’m just so exhausted. And there’s still so much to be done. It will never end.