I sometimes imagine my grief plotted on a graph, like the London Stock Exchange, or the milestones of a serial dieter. Time marches along the bottom, survival charted first in hours; then weeks and months; now years. Seven years of grief. Along the side, invisible markers of emotional wellbeing: happy; stable; broken. A thick black line scores my halting progress through life, beginning off the scale in the abyss of new loss; that raw, choking pain impossible to describe to those outside of it.
It would be encouraging, I think, if I could stand back and view my graph, to see the line rise, continuing upwards as time trumps memory and the flashes of happiness become more frequent than their counterparts. Upwards, ever upwards; slowly but steadily. It is not unusual to find the curve interrupted by jagged daggers which force their way downwards, but the line rises again as quickly as it falls, and the curve continues smoothly. Onwards, ever onwards.
So lost am I, on this careful road to recovery, that I haven’t noticed the curve has quietly begun to flatten. That time continues to tick away, but the line which once headed steadfastly towards the sky now points only forward. Neither up nor down. For two, maybe three years, it has been this way. This is as good as it gets. Neither happy nor sad; neither better nor worse; just here. I think of the gentle platitudes offered up to me after Alex died, and I hear only now the unspoken caveat they carry. Time will heal – but there is only so much it can do. This is as good as it gets. For seven years I have shed slivers of grief with each step I have taken; my passage eased by the lightened load. Now I feel a clutch of panic as I look at the road ahead and realise I must walk it carrying the grief I feel right now, heavy and solid inside me. This is as good as it gets.
I never wanted to be this person. This woman who clings onto the past; who analyses her emotions and examines carefully how she feels each morning, before risking getting out of bed. I never wanted to be morbid, or self-obsessed, or so wrapped up in sadness that other people’s happiness rings hollow in her ears. I never wanted to be that woman. But I think this is as good as it gets.