I’m writing to you again because I’m not going to have time to for the next few days. At least, not the type of time I would want to have, where I can sit, alone, uninterrupted or dictated by a time frame.

I can truly sit and write to you, now, in this moment, and so even though I’m still so raw over completing my worksheet, even though I want to quit and call today good, I’m writing to you instead.

Some of my answers bother me. I know I have strengths. Yet I said I don’t because I feel like I don’t. Answering, “learning I can survive your death sucks” also bothers me though with that one I don’t really know why…

I guess the biggest thing I took away from this first worksheet is clarity. I can articulate why your death is so hard for me now. It wasn’t simply because you died. It’s because my life changed and the biggest change is the lack of physical presence.

I guess that might seem obvious to others, but it wasn’t obvious to me. I had never had to explain it in quite that way before, and so the worksheet helped in that regard.

I also knew, for a while now, that my grief was more intense when I was tired and exhausted, but I didn’t know the why behind it. Sitting and diving into that aspect brought a deeper understanding of what I experience in those moments. You always had a special way of giving me a motivational boost when I felt like I had nothing left within me. You helped me power through, dig deep, not quit, not give in. I miss that. I miss your support and encouragement and positive reinforcement.

I feel, at least from this worksheet, that I need to work on emotional expression. Maybe that means I need to put more effort into writing since I know that’s an outlet that helps. Maybe I need to look into other methods of expression so I have more to employ other than writing. I don’t know, but I feel that is an area of extreme deficiency and one I would like to work on.

And yeah… the whole “Your death wasn’t the end of my world,”… I don’t know what to do with that. I’m not even sure what it is I feel when I read those words to myself. Guilt, maybe? Possibly even survivor’s guilt though I wasn’t the one who was sick and going through surgery after surgery.

I think that’s what I want to explore the most in my next counseling session, though “want” is a very relative term. It’s the section of the worksheet that stirs up the most confusion and dissonance within myself, so it’s the area that needs the most clarification. I don’t “want” to dig deep into emotions that suck, but the only way to get better is to do it, so I want to do it… Fucking emotional bullshit… -_-;

I work for the next three days. I won’t have a lot of time or energy to process through a lot of this any further than I have. LPN classes start in a week and a half. By the end of May, I’ll be a nurse. I got my very own stethoscope yesterday when I picked up the last of my books.

I think that would make you smile. Nurse Jen… Who would have thought that me, your child who passed out at the sight of blood, would be in nursing school…

I love you, mom. Thanks for listening to me.