Writing and feelings are inconvenient

It's true. Writing my thoughts here is inconvenient. My feelings - about mostly everything - are also irrationally inconvenient. I love and hate both. So there.

When you go through profound loss - especially the loss of a child or children - it's like you gain magnetism. Other people's grief finds you and sticks to you like a magnet. I gather up their stories - this child in hospice, this mother in her grief journey, a husband blogging about losing his wife to cancer. I read their blog posts and I cry for them. I know how they feel - or even more importantly - how they will feel in the coming weeks and months and years. I want to tell them that it will get better, that they will find peace or something that feels like peace. But I can't lie to these kindred souls. It won't get better. It will persist. You will be changed. You can't go back.

Increasingly, my from-afar interactions with these strangers is via Facebook, where they post snippets of their feelings frequently and more publicly that I ever could. I read about their chemo treatments and physical wounds that won't heal, their genetic woes and surgeries and complications. I read about funerals and obituaries, some obviously posted via phones. Thousands of people follow these stories along with me and like and comment and share.

Would it be easier, would I post more often if writing were shorter, my platform more conveniently available? Would more people read my words? Would my story be more impactful?

In the end, I don't care. I write a thousand blog posts in my head and never find the time to put them here. And if one, or two or none read these words, then I'm OK with that, too. I don't care if my story impacts others. I don't really care if it helps others. I don't know if people read this and cry for me. I don't care if they don't.

And I'm certainly not sure if this is another level of hell in the middle of the many levels of hell that I've already experienced. Another stop on the Grief Train. Another bag of mixed emotions - to care enough to read from another's feelings and to be so callous as to shrug off the need for others to care about mine.

So no emotional Facebook posts from me. I'll wallow in this little slice of obscurity and enjoy it, thank you very much.