The Rogue Wave

Eleven years in and last week knocked me flat.

Not dramatically. Nothing happened.

My mind just stopped being as sharp as it normally is. The anxiousness came back after months of quiet. Things I normally finish sat unfinished. The resentment I carry toward certain people in my life moved closer to the surface than it has been in a long time.

Not one thing. Everything arriving at once.

That is what a rogue wave actually looks like from the inside. No warning. No obvious cause. Just everything slightly harder than it was the week before and your brain working against you instead of with you.

I did not see it coming. I never do.

People ask me how long the hard grieving lasts.

I understand why they ask. They are in the early part of it and they need to know there is another side.

I want to be honest with them. So I am going to be honest here too.

There is no easy grieving. I want to say that clearly before I say anything else. The question is not when does it get easy. It does not get easy. The question is what does it look like as it changes shape over eleven years.

Year one my brain barely functioned. Year four was different. Year nine was different again. Eleven years in I can do things I could not do in year one. I can build something. I can sit across from a parent in their worst moment and stay steady. I can write about Maddie without it taking three days to recover from.

But I still get knocked off the deck.

And I am still not entirely sure what knocked me this time. Whether it is processing my mother's loss. Whether it is the weight of the work accumulating. Whether it is fatigue or burnout or just grief doing what grief does when you have stopped paying close enough attention to it.

Probably all of it. Grief does not wait for a convenient moment and it does not arrive with a label.

I am on antidepressants. I will likely always be.

I want to say that plainly because the stigma around it still costs people who need them.

I have tried to wean off more than once over the last decade. Each time the dark clouds follow shortly after. Not immediately. Just quietly, the way they do, until one day you notice the weight is back and you understand what you were trying to prove and why it was not worth it.

I feel better because I am on them. That is the full truth of it.

Someone asked me recently if I thought about coming off them. I told them what I will tell you.

If a diabetic needs insulin, antidepressants are my version of insulin. My brain chemistry after what I have been through requires support that I cannot will into existence or meditate my way around or produce through exercise and gratitude alone. That is not weakness. That is just biology meeting lived experience.

If you are on them and you have been quietly wondering if you should be, or quietly ashamed that you still are. I want you to hear that from someone eleven years into grief who is still building things and still showing up.

They are part of why I can.

I have learned to move forward with my grief. Not without it.

That distinction matters more than anything else I could tell you.

Moving forward without grief is not available to me. It is not available to most parents who have lost a child or who have watched their child disappear inside something they could not reach. The goal was never to leave it behind.

The goal was to learn to carry it in a way that does not take everything else down with it.

Most days I can do that. Some days I cannot. Last week I could not as well as usual.

That is grief being a life sentence and me being honest about what that actually means eleven years in.

If you are in the early part of this and you are looking for a timeline, I understand.

I cannot give you one. I would be lying if I did.

What I can tell you is that eleven years from now your brain will work differently than it does today. You will be able to do things you cannot do right now. The waves will not stop coming but you will get better at recognizing them. Sometimes.

And on the weeks you do not, on the weeks everything arrives at once and your mind goes quiet and the anxiousness comes back and things sit unfinished and you cannot entirely explain why. That is not you going backwards.

That is just what this life looks like from the inside.

You are not alone in it.

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