Today feels like it’s swallowing me whole. My body is on fire with pain—my back, hips, thighs, everything just burns. Stretching didn’t help, and the coughing from smoking too much is ripping through me. I’m tired, beyond exhausted. And when I woke up, I didn’t even know where I was. For a moment, I thought maybe Dylan was still here. I wanted him to be here. I wanted to be anywhere but here. Waking up in San Antonio felt so foreign, like I was dropped into someone else's life.
I miss him so much. I can't explain it to anyone who hasn’t lost a child. They think I should be over it by now, that grief has an expiration date. But grief doesn't work like that. Some days, I do forget he’s gone. My mind protects me by pretending he’s just out there somewhere—maybe at the store, maybe out with friends—and that he'll walk through the door any minute. I cling to that illusion because accepting the truth shatters me. It’s like 2022 is still right here with me, and my heart won’t move forward.
I don’t want to store new memories. I’m afraid that if I do, the old ones with Dylan will fade, like sand slipping through my fingers. As long as I don't create new moments, I can hold onto the time when he was still here. I keep him alive by refusing to let go of those memories. If I build a future, what happens to him in my mind? Does he get left behind? I can’t bear that thought. I just can’t.
Yesterday was another blur. I was walking the dogs, then suddenly, I was in the car, and I didn’t know how I got there. I couldn’t remember if I brought the dogs home, shut the door, locked it. All I knew was that one moment I was walking, and the next, I was in the car, disoriented. It scared me. It terrifies me that my mind is slipping like this. Grief does that—it pulls you out of time and space, leaving you stranded somewhere between the past and the present.
I don’t want to keep living like this, with everything feeling so broken. I’m so tired of fighting—fighting doctors who won’t listen, fighting the medical system that doesn’t care. I’m tired of living in a world full of hate and anger. People don't know how to talk to each other anymore. It’s all arguments and blame. There’s no more real conversation, no more learning or understanding. I try to isolate myself from it all, but it creeps in. The media, Facebook—it’s everywhere. The algorithms shove things in my face that I don’t want to see. I stay on Facebook because it holds my memories of Dylan, my connection to the life I had before all of this. It's been my life for the past fifteen years, but even that space has been invaded by things I can’t control.
I don’t know what to do anymore. I want peace, but it feels impossible. I want my son back, but I know I can’t have that. I’m stuck in this endless loop of pain and exhaustion. I try to move forward, but every step feels like quicksand, pulling me further into despair.
People think I should be healed by now. They don’t understand how deep this wound goes. How could they? They haven’t lived it. They haven’t lost someone who was the light of their life. I loved Dylan so much, and I always will. No amount of time will change that. I’m not stuck because I’m weak—I’m stuck because losing him broke a part of me that I don’t know how to rebuild.
I know I’ll get up tomorrow. I always do, somehow. But today, I’m worn out. Today, I want to scream and cry and fall apart. Today, I don’t want to be strong. I just want the world to understand, to really see how hard this is. I want them to know that grief doesn’t follow a timeline, that it doesn’t magically disappear after a few years. I want them to know that I carry this weight every single day and that it hurts more than I can put into words.
I miss you, Dylan. I’ll always miss you.
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