.: Entry One-Hundred and Three :.

My name is Elliot Parker. Grief is a terrible thing. Right now I feel like I am grieving so much. I haven’t been here for so long. Not physically and definitely not mentally. Coming back here. It is different. It feels harder than it ever has. But then again, how is anything meant to feel the same.

I feel like I am on the verge of a storm of tears all the goddamn time. I feel like I am drowning. I’ve been playing for so long, pretending I had control. Trying to convince myself I could be in control of my life and how I feel and what would happen.

I was wrong.

If I deliberately created this, it seems all I created was freedom and the grief freedom brings.

It is time I told the truth, to myself.

I spent my life being controlled and manipulated. It has taken having a normal, healthy, happy relationship for me to see everything differently. From the reality of life rather than the screwed up tinted frame of what someone else wanted me to see.

I’ve seen the truth for all it is in every instance. I grew up with an emotionally abusive mother.

It has taken years in cognitive behavioural therapy to finally find words and names of it and I finally feel ready to acknowledge it for what it is. Because right now, how I feel is in free fall. I haven’t slept through the night in weeks. I wake up every few hours. Normally I am a full sleeper and I am grumpy as hell if I don’t sleep. Well without real rest for weeks now I feel like an emotional volcano waiting to explode. And I do. Every night when I lay in bed and there is nothing at all to distract myself with. No matter how exhausted I am I can’t fall asleep. All I can do is cry. I spend the days keeping it in. But at night, there is nothing to stop the floods. Every morning I wake up with that horrid hangover you get from crying your soul out.

You see, recently I found out the truth that I had needed to know. I found that the last tethers I had, the last shreds of rope that I had been tied down with were destroyed.

Sounds stupid right? How could I be tied down and not know it? How could I not know all that I do now? I suppose I sort of, subconsciously did, but I got to find out the whole lot, the whole truth, everything I needed to know from someone who didn’t have the agenda to lie to me. What hold she had to manipulate me with, what she was holding over me was gone. I was free. I am free.

The truth hurts, but I feel better for it. I was fed up to death with all the lies. Lies from the moment I was born it felt like.

So what is it like being free from that chaos and manipulation? It feels foreign. It feels weird. Like a new kind of grief. Like so many kinds of grief, I feel like I am grieving over so many things at once it’s a struggle to know where to start. It’s a struggle some times to know why I feel so emotional.

Some nights I just feel the foundations crumbling apart. I feel chunks of who I am falling away now that I am free from the torment I am struggling to find out who the hell I really am. There is only one consistency. One reassurance in the mist of this shitstorm, Dyl. I break down more, and I hate that I can’t help doing it in front of him. I just feel so on edge all the time. I just feel like I am trying to accomplish too much. I am trying to be too strong. I am trying so hard to get my shit together and stop falling apart when that is all I want to do.

Yes, I have suffered with depression before, but this feels different. It feels like that dark cloud is trying to get a grip to take hold and destroy me again but I keep fighting it all the time. I am so tired of fighting but I know I can’t let myself stop. I can’t stop fighting or I will never survive. I want to survive. I can’t let myself be swallowed up in the pain like I was before. I can’t let the unravelling of everything be the thing that kills me. I can’t let finally being free destroy me. I can’t let my liberation be the thing that messes up all the progress I made. I will not go back. I will not let myself fall further down the rabbit hole. I will not stop fighting. Not this time. It was so hard rebuilding the last time it took over. This time I will weather the storm. I will survive this storm and I will thrive. I have to. I have too much to live for.

I just have to find a way to slowly break down how I am feeling. I have to work it all out. But I think to do that, I think I need to explain how the ropes were broken. I need to tell the most unbelievable truth, but it’s the truth, it is my truth. It is my reality. It is what has been pulling me apart from the inside out. It is time I let myself just be free, whatever that is, it is such a heavy feeling. I thought being free was meant to feel lighter, like a weight lifted, instead the weight of the grief that has come with it has been like an elephant sat on my chest. No matter how hard I try to take care of myself, I can’t get that elephant to leave me alone.