Between Waves

Six whole months since my baby left this earth. People tell you that six months is still so early, but sometimes it feels like a lifetime has already passed since I last held my boy. Since I cuddled him close at night. Since I kissed his little face, heard his laugh, felt his arms around me.
Six months feels impossibly long. And when I look back at everything that has happened since that awful day, I honestly don’t know how I’ve made it this far.
I remember reading the words of other bereaved parents saying that it doesn’t get easier, that somehow it gets harder. I never truly understood what they meant but I do now.
In the beginning, I think I was surviving on shock. Drifting through the days in some strange, out of body state. I went out, I drank, I laughed, I had moments where I even had fun and I felt guilty for it, but there was still so much pain underneath everything.
Now though the shock has worn away and underneath it is the reality. The reality that my baby is gone. But grief ive learned is anything but linear.
The panic and anxiety have become almost unbearable. I feel like the rug hasn’t just been pulled from beneath me, the entire ground has disappeared. I lost my beautiful boy, and at the same time, every other part of my life seems to have become unstable too. My daughter is the one little piece of my world that still feels solid.
Some days I feel like I’m losing my mind.
I can’t drink anymore, I can barely cook, I struggle to watch normal tv, I spend money on breath work classes etc and end up panicking before and cant go etc. Most days I have very little motivation to do anything other than crawl back into bed. Every now and again, a tiny burst of energy appears and I try to hold onto it for dear life.
My nervous system is shot. Its terrified. Terrified that I’m going to die and have a heart attack. My body goes into complete panic, my legs shake uncontrollably, my heart races, my whole body is convinced that something terrible is happening.
Even though I know the worst has already happened.
One day my little boy was here running around laughing, giving me hugs and kisses, just being Woody. Only to be holding him the next day while he died.
How is a person supposed to make sense of that?
Every time I try to think about what comes next, I seem to hit another wall. Another problem. Another thing I don’t know how to fix. It all becomes too much, and eventually I find myself climbing back into bed because I simply cannot carry anything else.
All i can do is take it one day at a time, miniutes sometimes when I need to.
Hoping and praying that eventually something will shift. That I will wake up with a little more energy, that ill  find some strength to start rebuilding the pieces of a life I never asked to rebuild.
Yet sometimes I also just want to be, to not have to think about plans and money and homes and appointments and everything else life demands from me.
But how do you simply fall apart when you still have a partner and a child who need you?
How do you grieve the death of your baby when the rest of the world keeps moving?
I don’t know how I’m supposed to carry on living in a world without Woody.
Nothing feels right and the thought that I might have to carry this pain for the rest of my life absolutely fucking terrifies me.
People tell me that one day it will feel different, that the grief will change and ill learn to carry it. I want to believe them but right now, I don’t want to learn how to live without him, I don’t want a life where Woody is only a memory.
I don’t want to be strong.
I don’t want to find the lesson in this.
I don’t want to hear that everything happens for a reason.
I just want my fucking boy back.
My beautiful, funny, intelligent, cheeky, precious boy, my Woodkins.

It isn’t fucking fair.
It isn’t fair that a mother should have to bury her baby. It isn’t fair that a child should only get three years of this world.
It isn’t fair that Evelyn has to grow up without her little brother. It isn’t fair that his life was taken when he had so much more living to do. It isn’t fair that ours has been changed forever!!!

I just need and want him back 😭💔