A letter to the lovely bloggers

Since the lovely Sally recently mentioned my blog in one of her posts, my little place here has been overwhelmed with visitors. I'm both touched and mortified. Touched that people from all around the world could be bothered coming and wading through my thousands of words of grief, love, tribute, sorrow, anger, pain, joy and wonder. I'm mortified for the exact same reason, because you're reading my thousands of words of grief, love, tribute, sorrow, anger, pain, joy and wonder, which have fallen onto the page straight from my heart, with no filter, no editing, no sense of 'maybe I shouldn't write that', 'what if I offend someone', 'what if I hurt someone or they hurt me?' It's all here. I'm all here. I feel both validated and exposed by opening up this blog. It's a weird position to be in.

The truth is, I've written so much over the last seven months that I don't even remember half of it, so I don't even really know what you're reading on here, or whether the things I've written are true, or were ever true, of what I've thought and felt since Max died. I don't want to know half the things I've written, it makes me sick to go over past posts. Every time I've tried I end up just cringing, like you do when you have to listen to your own voice on your answering machine message. It's excruciating, isn't it?

Words are funny. I'm never short of them, but still I feel like I can't quite communicate what it is I want to. That I can't make the words reflect what I mean in my heart. And if I, whose life has been working with words in one shape or another, can't find the words, then who can? I keep thinking of all the people out there who can't so easily express their emotions. If I didn't have this outlet my brain would have exploded from thoughts and emotions by now. Where do your thoughts and emotions go if you can't get them out? That frightens me, to have them all locked up inside, boiling away and threatening to burst your seams at any given moment. 

Then again, I'm sure some people can't believe how easily I express myself, and are probably mortified by the depth and intimacy of things I reveal to the world. It's just who I am. I'm like this in real life, too. I'm always just open. Sometimes people take advantage of that and stick hot pokers in, but mostly people seem to really value it as a quality, and in turn feel like they can open up around me. It's a blessing and a curse, as most valuable things in life are, I guess.

Thank you, every one of you, for coming here to sit and remember Max with me for a while. For no matter what else I may bang on about on here, philosophies, psychologies, politics, whatever, that's what this place really is, a place to remember Max. All the rest is just me thinking and pondering things out loud, and expressing the conflicting range of feelings I now live with every day. Sorrow is joy, joy is anger, anger is love, love is sadness - they're all the same thing to me now. All those distinct categories have blended into one. When I write of something I'm angry about, it's probably actually fear doing the talking. When I write of something that has made me sad, it's probably actually anger. How can I expect you to tell the difference if I can't? Well, I don't know. Just know that everything here is exactly as it seems, and not what it seems at all, all at the same time. 

I visit, and have visited in recent days, many of your blogs. I could write a comment on every single post I've read. So many of your words resonate with me. So much so, that I have this overwhelming desire to eat them all up, to ingest them, so that I can keep them inside, within easy reach. What I find interesting, and challenging, is the diversity of this community I've found myself apart of. We all have differing opinions and beliefs on really big questions - like why do babies die? Where do they go when they die? Will we ever see them again in some form of afterlife? Many blogs I've read are written lovingly by deeply religious people, or by people whose other philosophies differ so profoundly by mine. I'm not offended by this, I'm interested in the ways our journeys differ, and, sometimes, are exactly the same, despite our many backgrounds. I feel the need to offer some kind of disclaimer that I hope that no one will be offended by my views either, which are, after all, tied up with the insane ramblings of a desperate, grieving mother. No one in their right mind should listen to those pearls of wisdom, so take everything I say about anything with a grain of salt.* After all, as Max's death taught me, I KNOW NOTHING AT ALL! 

* except things I write in capitals. If I say something in uppercase then you can trust that I really mean it, OK?

Thank you all for coming. I hope to learn more about all of you as we share this completely unenviable journey.