Pain that Feels too Heavy to Carry

Today, I find myself sitting quietly with a kind of pain that feels too heavy to carry, yet too real to ignore.

There is a grief inside me that I cannot fully explain -- not because I lack the words, but because the feeling itself is deeper than anything I have ever known. It is the grief of feeling like I have lost the people I love most in this world, while they are still alive and somewhere within reach, yet so far from me.

I think of M and G, and my heart breaks in a way that feels endless. I do not understand how things became like this. I keep going back to the memories I hold -- the years I spent loving them, raising them, doing my best in the ways I knew how. And yet now, I feel as if I am standing outside of their lives, looking in, unseen and unheard.

What hurts me even more is how I receive pieces of them -- not from them, but through someone else. Their father has become the only link I seem to have, and yet that link does not feel safe or kind. He brings me words that pierce my heart, words that make me question myself as a mother, words that make me feel as if my children see me in ways I cannot recognize.

I do not know what is true and what is not. I do not know if what I am being told is exactly how my children feel, or if it is being shaped in a way that slowly breaks me. But I do know this -- every time I hear these things, a part of me aches deeply, and I begin to doubt myself in ways I never used to.

It feels as though my perspective is being quietly dismantled, piece by piece. I find myself asking questions that hurt me even more: Was I really that kind of mother? Did I fail them in ways I did not see? Or am I being made to believe something that is not the whole truth?

And yet, even in all this confusion, one thing remains clear to me -- I loved my children. I still do. That has never changed.

I am also carrying my own battles -- my health, my body, the fear and uncertainty of what lies ahead. And in moments like this, I long not for attention, but for something much simpler and more human: care, concern, presence. To be asked, “How are you?” To feel that I still matter.

But instead, I am left here -- holding my pain quietly, trying to make sense of everything without breaking apart.

Tonight, I acknowledge this truth: I am grieving. Not just for what is happening now, but for what used to be, for what I hoped would always remain, and for the love I still carry that has nowhere to land.

And yet, even in this sorrow, I hold on to one small truth that I refuse to let go of -- that the love I gave was real, and that it still lives within me, even if it is not being returned in the way I long for.

For now, I will sit with this. I will breathe through it. I will allow myself to feel it, without forcing answers that are not yet clear.

Because this pain deserves to be witnessed -- even if only by me.