I still have rotten days now and then.

A couple weeks ago, I had an intense wave of yearning for Stephen as I was winding down for bed one evening, so I went down a deep rabbit hole, looking back at photos and videos of our life together. And I was hoping it would help me feel better to hear his laugh and see his smile, but it resulted in an intense wave of grief, I got very little sleep, and I was in an exhausted moody stupor the next day.

I share this because I was looking at my blog from a bird’s eye view recently, and I realized that I’ve been tending to only write posts on my good days. I think I do that because I have more energy, I feel inspired to share some revelation I’ve had, and I want to exude an attitude of resilience and positivity.

However, I feel that I am not being totally honest about my grief journey when I only write on the good days. Because the reality is, I still have bad days. There are days when everyone annoys me and I just want to be alone. There are days when I’m so tired I can’t do much of anything. There are days when I burst into tears without warning. (That happened today, actually.)

On a typical day, I feel like I am walking on a tightrope. (Or a slackline, an homage to my dear Stephen, the avid slackliner. As a funny aside, one time we stayed at a very fancy all-inclusive resort in Mexico and he set his slackline up over the pool. As you can imagine, the staff kindly asked him to take it down. Anyway, I digress…) I have a precise set of things that I need to do to feel okay, and if everything falls into place, then I can walk that tightrope very well. I’ve gotten pretty good at finding that delicate balance, but I still have my days where everything doesn’t come together quite right, and I fall off.

I was explaining this analogy to my boyfriend recently, and he said “Why don’t you just stop trying to walk on the tightrope?” And I totally understand what he was getting at with that question. Why am I trying to come across as strong, happy, and carefree all the time? I can be my authentic self, which means being sad or prickly or exhausted.

I will say, I do think there is value in learning how to walk the tightrope when dealing with intense grief. Because the reality is, I can’t be bursting into tears during a business meeting or a band rehearsal. There are times when I need to be able to hold myself together. But I don’t have to be that way all the time. In safe spaces with caring people, I can step off the tightrope and fully embrace my feelings as they are.

Towards the end of the TV series Sex and the City, Samantha is asked to speak at a breast cancer fundraiser. She’s up on the podium, trying to walk the tightrope, but it’s not going very well due to her intense hot flashes. She eventually realizes she’s in a safe space and she should really be herself, so she takes off her wig. And one by one, all the other breast cancer survivors in the room take off their wigs too, in a beautiful moment of solidarity.

So right now, I’m committing to writing more on my bad days. Because one of my intentions for this blog was to portray my grief journey honestly. And I’ve been filtering out the bad days too much. I’ll still be my usual positive self when I’m genuinely feeling that way, but I’m not that way all the time, and I don’t want it to come across that way here. I want you to see my sweaty, bald head sometimes, because that’s the real me. 🙂