Pain and Peace.

A dream of you. So precious. Something I hold on to every time I close my eyes. Everything always seems so real. You are so real, so hauntingly real in my dreams. You always come back to me.  You are always alive in my dreams.  You are alive in my dreams, but gone in my world.

I tell myself it’s truly you. Your presence is only being known in my dreams. I tell myself that you are coming back to me in some way or form, even if it’s not in reality.

I’ve been searching for a sign of you, a sign of your presence that you are still here with me in other ways. The only way you’ve come back is in my dreams, that’s the only way I’ll be able to see you again.

My latest dream – I am at our family house.  Our whole family is there. I am leaving for a big work trip, and will be gone for a while. I’m saying my goodbyes to everyone.  My mom, sister and cousins.  I’m even saying goodbye to our family dog.

But then in my dream I realize I need to say goodbye to you.

“Where is Austin?” I ask mom.

“I’m not sure, I think he is upstairs.” My mom replies.

I go searching for you in my dream, like how I continue to search for you in real life.

I check upstairs, I check downstairs, I check every room possible and you are nowhere to be found.  I keep searching for you in my dream, so I can tell you goodbye.

I wake up. I never got to say goodbye to you, and I never will. My dream is a reflection of reality. In my dream, I kept searching and searching for you, but I never found you to say goodbye.

I can’t believe how much my pain reflects in my dreams. How much my mind still hasn’t been able to process. How much grief and sadness I still have left in my soul.

It’s like no matter how much time goes by; my soul isn’t still able to accept you are gone. My therapist says I still have a lot of grieving to do, and my dreams are telling me this.

It’s daunting to think after 2 years of living without you, I still have a whole life time of grieving to do.

I found a quote about suicide the other day, and I wanted to share.

“People who died by suicide don’t want to end their lives. They want to end their pain.”- unknown.

I’ve realized the only way for you to end your pain was by leaving this world, you had no other option.

I have no other option but to continue to live, or try to.

When your life ended, so did mine. The life and person I grew to be were gone. I have to start over, start from the beginning.

When someone goes through a traumatic event, there is what happened before and what happened after. You cannot be the same person before the event happened, nor can you can be the same person afterwards.

I continue to try to recognize and relate to the new person I became after I lost you. I don’t know if I ever will be able to fully understand the new person I am today.  For now, I can hope for clarity, and for some sort of peace.

The only peace I will ever be able to get from this all is knowing you are finally in peace. If I didn’t know this is some way, shape or form I probably wouldn’t be here right now.

For now, your peace is my peace brother.

Thank you for everyone who continues to read my blog, it means a lot to me.  I hope I can always help in some sort of way.

Until next time.

So it goes.