Dear Ave,

It’s 20 to 1am on a September evening. It’s been a rainy September so far. How are you? I want to ask but I know it’s silly of me to ask this. But I have this feeling in my gut that you are somewhere still. Because you are. You were alive, and you were here on this Earth and I know you are still here.

How am I?

I feel lost Ma. and I have bad moments, really bad moments that don’t last. But when it does, it is a vortex I can’t get out of. And it’s in those moments that I feel the worst, that I feel scared that I might not be able to go on. I have nightmares still, and sometimes get these dreadful feelings before I go to sleep or right after I wake up from an afternoon nap.

Apart from this, I am living. When I came back to the UK after Harold’s death I stopped eating rice/dropped my carbs down. There were a couple of cheat days but so far I have been able to sustain a low-carb diet for almost 2 months now. My weight was 83kg when I came back mid-July from Manila, and now I am down to 78kg. My goal is 70kg by the end of the year. I haven’t been exercising but just cut the carbs. I am replacing them with more salt though which is terrible for my blood pressure and not the best way to lose weight. But at least, my blood sugar is controlled.

Work is fine, it’s just work. I am learning to stress about things I can’t control, like people’s work ethics, their behaviours and the stress of the job. I am sure that when it’s not that busy people in the department are really nicer to each other and people are in a better mood. However with the amount of work that has to be done I feel no choice but to work hard, to feel productive and to feel like I am doing a good job.

On my days off I spend it going out to coffee shops, to town, buying notebooks, reading books. I am currently studying the ALS manual which I will take on the 3rd of October and I am failing miserably at time management for studying.

Sometimes I feel like my life is so boring, that there is nothing else to do. My brain doesn’t want to do anything, doesn’t feel interested at anything, and I feel like I have lost interest in socialising as well. I feel lonely but I don’t want to “have a chat” with people. Sometimes I just want to be left alone. And then there are times I am a bundle of energy, ideas and inspirations and chasing after my dreams and writing and laughing and living.

My GP today me that grief is like a puddle, sometimes you’re in the puddle and sometimes you’re not in it. And I like it, because a puddle means something that has an end. There is a border to this puddle, or there is dry land around this puddle that you can step on to. And when I’m in one of those moments, I try hard to remember that I am just in a puddle, and it’s not permanent. That the feelings will pass, but I need to remember that they will. Sometimes I don’t remember at all and that’s when it gets scary.

I think Harold is saving me sometimes. Sometimes, when I have the dark moments, his smile/laugh/personality reminds me not to take life too seriously. To laugh while living. To enjoy it. But it’s all probably in my head anyway. Harold is dead, his life was cut too short, and he deserved better than a short life.

At the end, here I am, alive, while my parents and my brother are dead. There is a guilt here, that I am here and that they’re not. If they are in a better place, why do I feel guilty about being alive?

I know this is a normal feeling of grief. And I know eventually death will come to me as well. Sometimes, when I think about the decades I have ahead of me–if I am lucky–I can’t imagine it. I feel like it’s still a long journey and it makes me feel exhausted right now, the thought of all those years. What else is there to look forward to? Old age? Sickness? Loneliness? Dying alone?

I know I sound ungrateful. I know I am lucky to here and alive, and don’t get me wrong, I still want to do so many things in my life. I have always been morbid and these are just my thoughts, laid out here, raw and honest. I can’t help how I feel or think.

Anyway, I miss you Ma. Hope you can come to me in my dreams again. Please watch over us there.

Love, your daughter

Hershey