The Girl In The Mirror

I look at the girl in the mirror, and she’s lost and broken.
She aches for the life she thought she’d won when she found Jason.
She aches for basic normality, simplicity, and the plans they made not long ago.
She aches for the tradition of the holidays she was starting to build with the love of her life.
She aches for the multiple seasons of joy that have be ripped from her finger tips.
She aches to be held by the person she loves most in this world.
She aches deeply for the life she planned and the life she knew. The quiet moments at home and the date nights that never came. The man who called her daily to say I love you, and the partnership that is gone.
She aches for Jason. And the life she wanted with him. Because it is gone, he’s gone, and it will never be the same.
She aches for the text with his name to appear on her phone. Someone checking in on her, just because.
She aches for the small bickering, the husband and wife conversations. The bettering of herself because of him.
She aches for the partner, the dreamer. The person who inspired her to be better and love deeply.
She aches for the warm body next to her in bed, to wake up and say I love you, good morning.
She aches to be in her own house living the simple life she planned, prayed for, and dreamed of.
She aches for the positive pregnancy test, standing next to the love of her life, that she will never get to see with him.
She aches to tell him “you’re going to be a dad”.
She aches for the family they planned. The soccer games and trips to the mountains, him teaching them to do it all.
She aches for the days of winter planning, laughter and love.
She aches for the man she planned on for forever. She misses his presence every single second of every single day.
She wonders what she did to the world and God for this to happen to her and the man she loved.
She wonders why everyone around her gets what they want and she’s left with nothing but the gut wrenching pain of a life that should’ve been but never will.

I look at the girl in the mirror and I don’t know her.
She doesn’t care anymore about much.
She’s lost her motivation and inspiration.
She’s angry.
She wants to go back in time.
She hates the people who act like being sad still is wrong.
She hates them because they don’t know. She is jealous of their easy lives.
She hates the people who said they’d be there, and haven’t.
She hates that everyone else gets to move on.
She hates what the world did to her and to Jason.
She’s tired of being told you seem like you’re doing fine.
She’s good at pretending, for a few hours when it’s necessary.

What they don’t know is she goes home and cries herself to sleep listening to voicemails from her dead husband.
They don’t know she spends hours a day searching for new photos of Jason, just to look into his eyes.
They don’t know her mind never stops racing or thinking about him.
They don’t know how much she hates this new world she’s forced into, a bull shit life she never asked for.
They don’t know what it feels like, what it looks like, what it takes to “seem ok”.
They don’t know that she hopes the days will just come to an end so she can go to sleep because it’s the only place that this reality doesn’t seem real.
They don’t know, because they never asked. And some of them never even mustered up an I’m sorry.
They don’t know the anger stews in her daily, as she races through all the pains that break her, that are different than losing Jason, but enhanced without him here.
They don’t know her heart is shattered for the in-laws, and extended family who never showed up for her or for Jason when their world was crumbling. For the loving mother and father in law she doesn't and didn’t have.
They don’t see the girl that wrestles internally with wanting to express the pain and trauma inflicted on her by them, how badly that hurts and derails her days.
They don’t see the girl running every scenario through her mind, of how things could’ve been different, if only someone in Jason’s family had bothered to tell HER that a genetic mutation, that causes cancer ran in their bloodline.
She replays the days over and over in her mind, thinking of all the “symptom’s” she could’ve taken more seriously had she known.
They don’t see the pain she fights to hide trying to forget the words that were said to her before she lost Jason. “You stole our son”, “You don’t know what it’s like to be a mother”, “You forced him to not contact us”, “The way you’ve acted through this all is embarrassing and we’ve told all our friends, they can’t believe you”. Even though she knows none of them are true, they were words said meant to intentionally hurt her, they haunt her anyways.
They don’t see the anxiety that races through her when one of their names appears on her phone.
They don’t know what it felt like to be left in the dark when his parents planned a second memorial, without her. How, even though that was months ago, it still hurts.
They don’t know what it felt like when she accidentally stumbled upon the revised obituary his family shared in their local paper, the one that cut the entire paragraph about her and Jason’s love and life together, out.
They don’t see the way her mind replays the last weeks of Jason’s life over and over.
They don’t see the way the trauma of his cancer and the last year has slowly started to appear and break her.
They don’t see how she tries to remember the version of him that was healthy, because the version of him in the end was painful, traumatic, and not the way he wanted to be remembered nor the way she wants to remember him.
They don’t know that no matter how hard she tries, that version still makes its way through and breaks her when she least expects it.
They don’t know that she can’t bring herself to move his things.
They don’t know that she holds his clothes tight to her to smell them and feel him with her.
They don’t know that she writes him letters in her phone each and every day.
They don’t know what haunts her during the days as her mind races and never stops or the loneliness that creeps in at night.
They don’t see weight of it all that she carries behind the smile.
They see the smile, the single 30 mins of a day that can be faked. Little do they know that when it’s over, she closes the door, hangs up the phone, gets in her car and her body collapses to the floor. And she cries. Because it’s all simply too much to hold, and the person, her person, Jason, her love, her best friend, her entire world and husband who made it all ok, isn’t here to hold her.

The girl in the mirror is me. She may look the same on the outside and you may see the smile on her face, but on the inside everything she’s ever wanted is gone and she’s breaking and will never be the same.