Time is passing, why won’t my grief?

It’s been 1 year, 6 months, and 7 days since Renee died.

That’s…

79 weeks…

553 days…

13,272 hours…

796,200 minutes…

47,779,200 seconds…

…without her.

To say I miss her. would be a severe understatement. Not a day goes by I don’t wish she was still here. Night after night I find myself re-living the weeks leading up to her death in a nightmare. It always ends the same…I struggle to wake myself up as the vision of her begging me to kill her fills the backs of my eyelids. She’s pleading with me, telling me I’m not listening. That nobody is listening. Why won’t I help her die…

Cancer is an ugly demon. It takes the strongest people and beats them senseless, over and over. It teases and manipulates them until they think they’ve finally gotten the upper hand. But then it lashes back with even more force than before. And after it destroys every bit of dignity a person has, it offers no mercy in the final hours, as it steals every last breath away.

Here I am. A year and a half later, still trembling in my sleep as the memories wade in and out of my dreams. When traumas from my past would haunt me, it used to be Renee who knew how to shake me loose from their traps, even when I thought I’d fallen in too far to be saved. Now that she’s gone I find myself struggling to avoid my vices. Clinging to the only non destructive coping mechanism I’ve ever mastered. Distraction. Work as many hours out of the day as possible. Play with the kids and chase their busy schedules in all the remaining hours. And get home before I fall asleep as to not awaken others when jolted out of bed by my own screams.

When my Dad died, everyone always told me that as time passed it would get easier. Almost 11 years later, I struggle to remember the sound of his voice or the way that he laughed, but I definitely can’t say it’s ever seemed easy to move on without him. Every place I’ve ever lived since he died, I’ve slept with his baseball glove under my bed, as if one day he’ll be back for just one more game of catch. My forearm engraved with a sentiment that more descriptively represents my feelings on life without him than the phrase “THIS SUCKS,” that my 13 year old self so angrily proclaimed. And here I am at 24, after losing Renee, the woman who showed me more motherly love than I could have possibly deserved, and all I want to do is stomp around and scream “THIS SUCKS!” just as I did when I was a teenager. But I’m an adult now. And Renee is gone, no longer here to catch me from falling down my black hole. And although I have plenty of people in my corner looking out, there’s still a huge hole in my heart. A void that will never be filled. Time is passing, why won’t me grief?

Can’t change the past, but we must change the future.

“The U.S. Military’s Sexual Assault problem is so bad the United Nations is getting involved.”

That is an actual headline from the news today. Several countries in fact recommended that the U.S. military remove the responsibility of deciding to prosecute sexual assault cases from chain of command to an outside civilian with experience in the field. Last year over six thousand cases of sexual assault were reported across all military branches. Of the over six thousand cases reports, only 317 perpetrators were convicted. I’m no mathematician but that looks like less than 5% of reported sexual assaults in the military last year actually resulted in punishment. There is a higher percentage of military personal opting not to prosecute out of fear of retaliation. Last year alone the number of reports withdrawn from investigation totaled 10.7% of all reports. The biggest reason being fear of retaliation. That’s sickening. So sickening, the UNITED NATIONS is stepping in. That is down right embarrassing and appalling. The most powerful military in the world that we even fear each other.

Fear. The most powerful weapon of all. You know, it will have been eight years Sunday since I was raped, and every so often I’m still rattled with fear. A side effect of being violated with such malice and disregard. It’s extremely difficult after experiencing something so traumatic not to base entire life decisions off that fear. Feeling like you’re broken. Afraid to be alone but afraid to be too close to anyone at the same time. Settling. Because what you know seems safer than what you don’t know. Everything seems complicated. Every noise you don’t recognize makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. It becomes a habit to always have a knife or some sort of protection. Always park under a light at night. Fear. It lasts longer than the bruises. Less visible than scars, but a million times more painful. In the eight years since that night it feels like I’ve been through hell and then some. Emphasis on the word through. Because eight years ago I never would have believed I’d make it through to the other side. But here we are. Here I am. Eight years later it finally feels like I’m putting the pieces back together. Fear might always be there. It might always drive me. But as long as it pushes me forward I’ve come to accept that I can’t change the past. I can’t bring back the people I’ve lost. I can’t take back that night. I can’t change the destruction I turned to in the aftermath. I can just keep pushing forward in hopes that one day in the future I’ll learn embrace the fear of the unknown to come, rather than dwell on the fear known in my past.