Day 48

Feeling better today. Stronger. Yesterday was...excruciating.

For the first time, I believe, I experienced  real sorrow and grief. I say this because what I felt yesterday was something new - raw and horrible. It felt like the weight of the world was bearing down on me and that it was never going to let up.  I was despondent, unconsolable, weeping uncontrollably. I felt like there was no hope for me, for a better tomorrow. I don’t want to experience another day like it, but I’m told by my grief counselor (Andrea) that, as much as it hurts, it’s actually a good thing in the long run. I’m still trying to make sense out of that one, but for now I place my faith in her and her abilities to guide me through. But make no mistake, the depths of grief and despair are truly awful places to live. 

Today I spoke to a friend who is going through his own personal hell. He has a child (older teen) that suffers from addiction and has been in numerous treatment facilities during the last 2 or 3 years. We both agreed that we can’t truly appreciate the hell the other is going through, only that we know it’s awful. As painful as I imagine his situation is though, I would trade my circumstance for his. For the one thing he has that I don’t is the hope that tomorrow, or next week, or next month, that my child, the child that I knew from birth and loved with all my heart for all his life, will return to me. It would be agony to watch the downward spiral of addiction and have all my efforts to help ignored or rejected, but the hope of a better tomorrow would, I think, sustain me. To give me the perseverance to continue to try and try again. And to keep trying. Forever. 


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