Sometimes Being Real Feels Like This ...

 

Sometimes Being Real Feels Like This ...  by Gloria Faye Brown Bates

Lately the stress I have held down for so long has been surfacing, threatening to take me down to the point of breaking down.

My chest feels tight, my breaths short, I have that feeling of just letting go, go all to pieces, fall down on the bed ... turn into a weeping crybaby.

Stress ... I have been good about keeping it pushed back. I don't usually let it get the best of me. I have been building up through time ... since Skip Bates  Skip began to get seriously ill in 2016. The truth is I have lived with such stress since May 29, 2010 when my son, my only child died.

No, the truth is ... I can't remember not being stressed. Since 1997 it began with me going on a journey to fight for my Life ... I survived non-Hodgkins lymphoma.  Then ... before I recovered years later ... Skip Bates survived colon cancer.

Just writing these words in no way even touches on all we went through to survive. We survived, didn't look back ... kept going.

During this time one family member after the other died ... some through terrible circumstances ... friends died ... our beloved dogs one by one died either by old age, cancer, snake bite. The very people I knew, loved with my Heart as a little girl... all died. No one can know the pure, raw grief unless suffering how it feels.

Skip was in a tractor-trailer wreck in New Mexico ... a Toyota car with 2 young girls hydroplaned on the wet interstate hitting Skip's steering axle. Several weeks later a woman ran a stop sign broadsided Skip's pickup when he was taking my stepfather home late one evening.

We lost everything in a house fire ... just days afterwards ...my cousin was hit head-on by a log truck.

Through time I have pushed forward, blinding ... numbing myself to the pain. I didn't sit, cry, dwell on the pain. I did carry the sick, panicky, dread ... scared feeling inside while pretending all was alright when it wasn't at all. Why would I tell anyone?

I don't need pity ... I don't need sympathy ... truthfully sometimes  ... I don't know what I need. I don't even want to talk about what hurts, bothers me ... I won't talk about it.

When writing about such ... it makes for something to write about ... this is my only outlet I allow myself to have. Like now ... hopefully I bring peace to myself for some time.

Writing is a part of ME just as drawing, reading, creating ... I write real ... I am real ... sometimes being real feels like this ... no more no less.

Photo owned by ME ... 

❤