Long distance friend

For close to a year we lost touch,  but she suddenly wrote to me yesterday and we connnected again.

Two weeks apart our birthdays are and we share so many feelings and experiences, the most intense of which is the loss of our mothers through cancer.

It is so comforting to hear from her and to write to her, because she will and can understand. Because she will not look at my words and expressions and call me socially inept or antisocial. She knows what it means to lose someone, she knows what it feels like to lose all ambition and to break down, even two years on (she lost her mum a year or so before mine.... I remember that day well when she wrote to me. She was distraught, and I was with my mum that time. I cried for her loss, even though I only met her twice in my life. I cried because I know her pain will be my pain. And perhaps better than anyone else, I can share and feel that pain, and she can feel that pain of mine...)

How comforting to hear from her thats I'm doing the best I can, even though I break down and my mood dives. Nobody can understandd why I at times choose to shut down and shut everyone away. Do i not have that right? She said she dors that too, even to her fiancee, just to cry, just to be alone , just to try to find some semblance of sanity and normality again.

Death robs you not only of your loved one, but also of your ability to make sense of things and of the world. Death makes you see so clearly the futility of so many things we get so upset about.... Death makes you wunder how people can spend hours discussing such trivial things. Losing some one you love makes you special, it's a rite of passage not everyone has experienced (but everyone will experience one day, one day...)

Loss isolates you from people who cannot understand, from people who have no patience or who are afraid to talk about it.

But, as my friend said, experiencing loss and death can also be so empowering. It charges you with this sense of "I can achieve and face anything", for better or worse . It doesn't make you superior to everyone else, just makes you more sensitive and sensible about life and how much time we waste by taking each moment for granted.

She wrote to me and empathised with me about how lonely I am. She encouraged me to seek out someone, a significant other who can feel me, who can see through the sadness and see the potential and the warmth in me. Nonesense that I must learn stand on my own now. How can I even stand when everything and everyone I've known and cared about fell apart and disappeared? 

Now more than ever I need love. I've heard this before, even (and surprisingly) from the monk I occasionally talk to in times of desperation and need. Love does heal all wounds, love and the touch of another who has a special place in your heart can do so many wonders...

My friend said her fiancee has saved her so many times from giving up and losing it all. She expressed concern that I am facing all these emotions alone and lack support to fully make me heal.

But go on I must, day by day by day, even though there are so many moments I don't want to go on anymore and choose to drown out emotions and anxiety and pain with sleep (or drink...). I must go on, even if I feel such emotions that just exhausts me deeply and that I cannot share at all except on this blog?

One day, I will be stronger.

One day.

One day.