January will be here soon. It will be a hard month for my family. My grandsons father passed away near the end of Jan this year. And it will mark 2 years for me since the mauling.

Knowing myself, I will throw all my energy into work, random projects around the house, and find 100 things to deep clean. 

l’ll run myself ragged just to avoid the sound of my own thoughts. 

I do always make it a point to reflect on how I feel, but that has to come later…not during. It’s a process.

It’s kind of my own distorted version of Dark Night of the Soul.

It’s like a glass of milk you almost finished but forgot about. Spoiled and rotten in the bottom.

There I am standing on the rim of it at the beginning of January. Looking down inside, then stepping over the edge and slowly making my way down, until I reach the bottom of the glass. 

The last week of January.

Rock bottom.

And during that week, I’ll dredge my way across the bottom of the glass, through the rottenness, to the other side. 

From there I’ll slowly make the ascend back up the other side, spending half the month of February digging myself up out of the hole I put myself in. 

When I reach the top, I’ll stand on the rim and stay there for another week or two. Processing all the emotions, looking down at the all the shit I left at the bottom of the glass, and figuring out what I learned from it while I was down there. 

Then I’ll move on into March….Spring. A new beginning, a reawakening, and for me…self-forgiveness. 

Forgiveness for what I couldn’t see coming last year, and the year before. Forgiveness for not being able to stop any of it, or being able to fix it after the fact. Forgiveness for how long I’ve sat in the grief of it all. 

And for a while I’ll believe it. I’ll believe I’ve forgiven myself and I’ll feel the weight of my load lighten. 

Until it creeps back in and pitches a tent. Grief and trauma are complicated things.