Some days are harder than others

My mind is racing, my jaw is clenched, and the tears fall as I lay in bed. It doesn’t matter what I do, my anxiety is at an all-time high, my stomach is churning, and my heart is caught in an endless loop of painful memories. God, if there was a rewind button for life, I’d press it. I’d press it over and over and go back to 2014, when life was as it should be, before our nightmare began.

Yesterday, I found myself back at the hospital. It’s the second time I’ve had to go there since the night Jack was taken from us. The first time I literally had no choice after breaking my elbow, and there was no avoiding it. Yesterday, I was there with my daughter. Trying to hold it together, and with every step down those familiar corridors my heart was breaking all over again.

As I walked toward the X-ray waiting room, my insides screamed with every single memory that haunts me. The last time I walked these corridors was to be with my brother as he lay in palliative care, at the end of his life. The weight of losing him was unbearable. I thought that was the heaviest my heart could ever feel, but then I had to walk that corridor again, 15 months later, to see my beautiful boy in the morgue.

It took every ounce of my being to keep myself together yesterday.

Sitting in the X-ray waiting room, I did everything I could to try and escape the thoughts and memories. I scrolled social media desperate to find something to distract myself but I was triggered.

The hospital for me has become a place of loss and heartbreak, a place that reminds me of all that I can’t get back.

When I got home I allowed myself the space to sit in my grief and feel all those painful memories and feelings. After lots of reflection and processing all my thoughts, I put my journey of trauma and grief aside and came to think of the hospital differently. Hospital is a place of healing for so many people. It’s actually a healing space for both my family and friends and for that I’m so thankful.

It’s a place where miracles sometimes happen, it’s a place where lives are saved and it’s a place where people are given more time to live, and people get to go home to their families.

I just wish my family got to come home.

Some days are just harder than others, and yesterday was one of those days.