Welcome?

I've learned that places of grief and mourning are never ones you really want to be welcomed into, but I do anyway. Because you may be a bereaved parent yourself, or maybe you know one, and my hope is that maybe you will find the comfort that I have in blogs like mine: that knowing you are not alone on this heartbreaking journey makes the burden of it less powerful, less consuming. If you are a bereaved parent, my heart goes out to you. I wish you peace and eventually, some ease of your pain. Welcome.

The name of my blog, Mi Isla Sola, is Spanish for My Lonely Island. A few other translations came up for that as well, but this one suited my headspace the most. I feel like I am on an island in a way. Alone. There's the rest of the world on the mainland, and they're looking toward something. From my island, I am looking toward the same thing, but we see it very differently from our separate vantage points. Though I am near the people on the mainland, and can hear them, see them, and them me, I am not "with" them. I am removed in an almost physical sense, from the rest of the world. I can participate in the mundane every day realities of life, but I don't really 'feel' part of it all. I don't know how I feel about it really. On one hand, I appreciate this new way of looking at the world, like I have bullshit glasses now; in that I can spot all the bullshit in the world, quickly, and not bother myself with it. I've gained a sense of what's important to me in life, and it's not stuff and things of material worth, but love of family and friends, and precious times with them. But it's a lonely place, feeling isolated from the rest of the world; a place in which everyone seems to have some place to go, some people to see, something funny to laugh at and enjoy. I get angry that I don't have the naïveté I once did, with nothing but the weather to complain about, nothing but a few bills to worry about. It's all so trivial now, and I find that I compare everything in life to the loss of Isla. It's not very productive, or conducive to healing, I'm sure, yet I do it anyway. For example, when someone I know recently complained about her broken arm, and the hassle it presented to her, I was enraged that she could be so shallow and unappreciative of her life. How dare she complain about such a minor inconvenience. I'm trying not to compare everything to my loss, because really, if I do that, I will win every time. There is truly nothing worse than enduring the death of your child, I'm convinced. Yet I must realize that everyone's experience is their own, with value and worth in themselves. I, like many others in the world are coping with a bum deal, and I should embrace, not reproach them for their experiences. I want to become a better person, not a bitter one. Eventually.

I started journaling a couple of weeks ago, and I'm going to copy and paste those entries here, retroactively, so the dates will be weird for a bit.