Dark Days

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For any one of you who ever experienced a tragedy in your life, you most likely understand this post all too well. In the midst of the storm, when lightening first strikes and the pain and heartache is fresh, you are surrounded by people. You are wrapped in a warm blanket as the rain (and the world) come crashing down around you. You get phone calls, texts, messages, people coming by with food and gifts, more offers for help than you know what to do with when the storm first strikes. You might be experiencing the greatest heartache of your life, but you are surrounding with arms and helping hands. If you’ve ever been through this, you know how comforting this feeling is. You also know what comes next…

The sun comes out, well for the rest of the world the sun comes out. For you, you might have a brief time period where you are hanging on to the lingering love that’s just been poured down on you. But then, then you suddenly find yourself curled up in ball lost, confused, heartbroken, ALONE, scared, devastated, depressed… The phone is no longer blowing up, Social Media is quiet, your house has become a disaster (you feel like your life has too), you struggle to get dressed, you can’t focus on anything you need to, you cry all the time and if you’re aren’t crying you’re on the verge of… The energy from others you once used to sustain you has run out. You feel broken, lost and so incredibly alone.

For many, the days after the harsh storm are the darkest, and the hardest. It makes sense, people have to move forward with their lives, they too get exhausted reading, hearing, following your story, and you can understand, it’s exhausting! But for you, the one still in the midst of the storm, it is debilitating and moving on seems impossible. You want to move forward as well but sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you can’t. You’re stuck. You’re moving forward but it’s like being on a treadmill, you go nowhere. Your heart is still broken, it still aches as much as it did the day the lightning struck. You find that people expect you to get back on track with life, work, study, be a parent, be a spouse, keep up on chores, fulfill your commitments, finish projects…you can’t blame them, things have to get done, you certainly can’t drown in your tears forever.

But…

Pain has no expiration date. You don’t have one or two weeks/months/years to get over it and move forward, your heart and your brain don’t work that way. When those around you have moved forward from your story, you still have to live it, EVERY SINGLE DAY, every SINGLE WAKING HOUR. Your heart has NOT stopped working, you still find yourself shivering alone in the rain, and although this time you have to find the strength to wrap yourself up. It’s dark, the days following the storm are so, so dark.

Someone close to me said to me a week after we lost our embryos, “Smile, life goes on!” I wanted to punch her in the face. Everyone talks about the rainbow that appears after a storm, but it doesn’t seem to appear for you. You try your hardest to see it, but you see a dark sky. Some days the literal sun is out and you hate it, after all how could it be shining when your heart is aching so badly.

The dark days following the storm can seem lonely, scary and bleak, there is no rainbow, although people might try to point it out to you. Will the rainbow come, I imagine it will, it has always eventually came for me. I’m in the midst of my dark days, I don’t have an answer for you as to how to get through it, how to survive it, but can only simply say you’re not alone after all I’m just another girl sitting here hoping for a rainbow, too and I love you broken and all.

XOXO,

Deja