Fading to a Brighter Future

It is 9:59 am. I have now been awake for just about three hours. After three hours sleep. My thoughts wake me. The horrid thoughts. The memories of what I thought I had creep back into my mind the moment a hint of consciousness breaks through, sending my stomach back into knots, my thoughts back into overdrive and my heart back to its labour of aching.

This isn't sounding very positive is it? But for a hug and a kiss and a smile in the morning I would give anything. And now I am crying again, recalling the times when Him Formerly Known As Bear did just that and I was grumpy. Ungrateful.

Can anyone tell me why it is so hard for me to recall a time when I wasn't awful? When I was appreciative of what I had? When I showed how much I cared? When I didn't wake each morning hating myself and my life?

There is one person out there who can. And that person is unfortunately Him Formerly Known As Bear. He is is waking in the mornings with a hug and a kiss and a smile from Her. Waking with a good feeling. Waking with a future to look forward to with an abundance of hopes and dreams of what might be and little plans for the day ahead.

Only he won't tell me of my good days. He can't. Because he has buried them. Buried them under the bitterness, sadness and hurt that made him turn from the reasons they began to dwindle and look for an escape route. He has buried them under the guise of having the courage to do the right thing. They will stay inside him, hidden from me. And also hidden from Her.

But one day I will be able to recall them. Of that I am certain because what I feel now will pass, many of you have told me that - those of you who know from experience and even some of you who are still going through it but a little further down the road. I do know that it is all part of the grieving and part of the recovery. Some alone time, some lonely times. Time to think for myself, about myself, time for tears and for aching and for healing.

And that is not something I could do in the arms of someone else. Not unless I too buried the past. Leaving it with a far greater power to come back and haunt me, casting long shadows over all my days, making sunny ones a little less bright and darker ones so much darker. The ghost in the machine.

For that reason I would rather wake alone, feeling sick and tired but with the knowledge that I am every day looking the ghost of my past in the eye and daring it to do its worst. It does. And it hurts. But with every attack it loses just a little of its power and fades a little more. A tiny bit at a time, but fading. And the sooner it fades the sooner the light can shine through. For me. And hopefully in time, my someone else.

yours in hope and fear, AJ x