Inhale.  "I can't do this....It's so hard"  Exhale. "Smile and do it anyway"
I am broken.  I can do this for an hour, a day, a week, a year...but a lifetime? How do I do this for a lifetime?  An entire lifetime?
Looking at the milestones that are passing us by, marking our progress, and I feel myself growing numb.  It's a comfortable numb.  The kind that smiles and laughs but doesn't always ring true.  The kind that most people don't even notice because they are fooled by the smoke and mirrors.  It's easier....or is it?  I don't even know anymore.  I am lost in my own confusion basking in the familiarity of feeling nothing.  If I felt...if I allowed myself the luxury of processing the loss...how would I breathe? How?  Comforting myself with things that ultimately bring no comfort.  Missing the strength that my past held.  Deluding myself that I am no longer strong enough or maybe the delusion is that I am strong enough?
Every milestone we reach in joy is tinged with the sadness of being another milestone away from my momma.  It's not the firsts....it's the seconds and thirds, the forever and evers.  I don't want to change and grow and be different. I want to be the same as before. to hold on to the past in a way that makes it feel like the chasm isn't growing ever wider.  It's not depressed, though it sounds that way, it's not sad.  I don't know.  I guess that's the first step, I don't know.  How do I get to know? I need to go back to what was working.  It's been 2 years on hold....2 years waiting for the other shoe to drop.  A year of dealing with the firsts and then a year waiting to see if the seconds felt any different. Turns out they don't  It all sucks and is okay in one fell swoop.  I don't miss her more now but I also don't miss her less. I miss her differently.  She is still the one I want to call and text and talk to, the one who  want to tell me I'm doing okay. The one I want to make proud and the one who I know would delight in the mundane with me.

I guess the quest starts here, what it is I'm not sure yet. I just need to put one foot in front of the other and find the path that I long for and was successfully navigating before numb became normal.