Time is slipping. I’m not really sure how it can move at such an accelerated rate, yet seem to progress so slowly all at once, but it does. It moves on its own accord. You can’t alter it. You may try, but only in vain. Earlier this month, August 6^th to be exact, I was tidying up the house for the evening, sipping some coffee, and heading up to bed-book in hand, to read for a bit, when suddenly a thought hit my like a truck: yesterday was DD. YESTERDAY. For the first time in six years, since its inception, I had missed it.

This was a win.

Diagnosis Day (DD) is when my world fell apart. It was when I learned our precious Miss Elliott was being consumed from the inside out by the ravenous genetic monster known as Tay-Sachs disease that, while first would rob her of every basic form of human functioning, it would also eventually kill her as well. August 5^th, 2009 was the day our world stopped. This was the point of no return. At that moment, I would never be who I had been for the entirety of my life pervious to this point, ever again. A change had occurred. I was a new person, in a new life, living a bad dream called Reality.

For years, even since her death, I’ve dealt with the grief and anxiety of that day preemptively as it approaches. It’s like watching your life on an old movie projector. Jagged scenes flash intermittently into your memories and the feelings behind them are so real they’re palpable. You wish you could look away, but you can’t so you squint through half-closed eyes between your fingers instead and try to take in as little as you can handle at a time. Knowing you’ve survived it already doesn’t make it any easier to see again.

This year it didn’t happen. I missed it, completely. I was ecstatic. Grief didn’t consume me in the days leading up to August 5^th. Normal life did. I was happy to feel that way, normal. Happy not to feel I had been gulping water instead of air. Happy not to feel the days ticking off the calendar just to get through them. Happy because I had been feeling this way a lot recently. It was energizing, reinvigorating.

I haven’t felt like myself in a long time. I’m tired, irritable, overwhelmed, stressed out. And it’s not me. Could I be anemic, have trouble with my thyroid, something else, I wondered. A visit to the doctor and quick blood draw tells me I couldn’t be healthier. My levels of everything couldn’t have been more precisely in the middle of the normal range…on everything. Great.

So what then?

Being a mom is hard. Being a wife is hard. Being a daughter, daughter-in-law, sister, aunt, friend, coworker, Christian, etc. is hard. I’m hard on myself. I expect a lot out of me. I absorb all the stress like a sponge. I expect to keep going, keep moving forward gliding along so gracefully that no one can see my feet paddling furiously below the surface. I put a lot of pressure on myself to make everyone else feel happy by being polite, sucking up their crap, putting my own thoughts and feelings aside to seem agreeable, showing up for everything, saying yes to it all, entertaining delightfully in a spotless home, all with a freshly baked pie and compliment ready to offer up to the next person I interact with. And all I’ve succeeded in doing is feeling like I’m losing myself for everyone else’s gain.

Losing Miss Elliott was hard. It still is hard. And when you feel like you have this image of I’m doing great to uphold, it’s the kind of pressure that builds up until the final straw drifts down on top of you and you break.

In talking this out with one of my few closely trusted friends she sent me a message that I really needed to hear:

“You know, you don’t have to be “strong” and no one expects you to be. You get to freak out, cry, scream, be sad and be pissed off. It’s your love for your family that keeps you moving forward, not strength. I think people confuse strength with determination. You are determined to live your life and carry on for Elliott, Skylar, and Loren. You are choosing to move forward out of love for your family and you do it with such grace. That’s not being strong. That’s being a mother. That’s being a wife. That’s being you.”

I needed that so much. She wouldn’t see me as less valuable if I had a less than stellar moment. Why should I see myself that way? What I don’t need is to try to live up to a false sense of strength that’s my own creation. It’s exhausting, it’s stressful and eventually, you’ll break. I couldn’t be further from perfect. I need to do a better job accepting that. I think everyone else would accept that of me, but somehow it’s harder to come by that acceptance of myself so I’m working on it. I’m taking care of me. Of my body, of my mind. I’m letting go of the hold that all those old obligations had on me. Of all the expectations that I’ve felt like were there from others, and imposed on me by myself. Of my difficult relationship with grief.

A date on the calendar doesn’t have to rule my emotional well-being. August 5^th came and went without so much an acknowledgement of it. I miss Miss Elliott every day. I will always be sad over her loss. It will most likely always be hard for me to deal with, but like my friend said, and even if I stumble, have set backs, or don’t always handle everything as gracefully as I should, I “choose to move forward out of love for my family”, “That’s being me”, and I’m determined to carry on.