I am living with a life sentence of guilt, torture and sadness. I have been sentenced twice now and I don't know how to go on and function anymore.
Everyday people buzz around me about work and their lives and I participate to a minimum degree from behind these bars.
I visit my son's resting place and all I want to do is crawl in his casket and hold him, laying with him for eternity. I yearn to hold him from behind these bars.
I feel an enormous amount of guilt and relate to the sadness he felt that led him to self medicate. The extremities of my sadness and guilt are felt from behind these bars.
Spending time and showing an inch of affection towards my husband and my living children is an effort and admittedly, sometimes is even planned as I don't know how to balance between the living and the dead. Marriage and mothering is failed from behind these bars.
I used to identify as a strong, independent, intelligent, funny and down to earth woman. I know identify as an empty shell of a person - a ghost among the living, a person who is now completely inadequate on all levels. My identity has been lost from behind these bars.
I wonder how long this prison sentence will actually be? While I know I'll feel moments of happiness and comfort again, especially with my children, I also recognize that it will carry a dark cloud.
Just as someone serving a life sentence would feel from behind these bars.
Perhaps I'm stuck, perhaps this is normal. Perhaps I just don't care. Perhaps giving up is something a person behind bars does. Everyone, including myself says "you have to fight, you have children to fight for".
My response to that is that I am fucking fighting. Everyday and every night I fight. What does fighting get me? Afraid to sleep at night as I now experience sleep paralysis. What does fighting get me? Another traumatic situation for my family and I to experience.
Never would I have ever shared a broken mental state with the public. Is it even helping other parents or will it ever? Or am I embarrassing myself for a future day?
All I can say and all I know for today is that losing a child is like being sentenced to sadness and guilt for life.