Due to various mundane circumstances I’m doing Mother’s Day with my Mum next week. The predictable emotion has been been relief. I don’t have to deal with the full force of it. Less expected is the impulse to retreat entirely.

I’m writing this at 9pm the night before Mothering Sunday and I am surprised by the almost overwhelming urge to go to bed. And stay there. I don’t want to face it at all. Grief continues to shock me. After all these years I thought I had crafted my coping strategies. I know certain days won’t be easy, but I’ve built the barricades. Then out of nowhere my defences are breached. Perhaps it’s because I am not occupied with planing something nice or preparing my game face. Maybe being left to my own devices has precipitated this exposure. Whatever the reason, I am exhausted by the emotion.

Actually, more than tired. I think what I feel is resentful of the onslaught. I do not have anywhere to put this pain. I want it to be over. I have followed the rules; therapy, read the books, talked, written, counted my blessing, tried to plug the gaps. I’ve spent 25 years learning and building and still it can all be washed away at any time. Be it a significant day or a random Tuesday, that wave can still engulf me.

Maybe this desire to check out isn’t actually all that surprising after all. It has still caught me off guard. The sadness is too heavy. I’d love to set it down, but I know I’ll always to hoist it up again. The knowledge of the permanence is just so fucking unfair. I’m too tired to rail against it. Too jaded to hope for a cure. I don’t want to bear it all. I want to take a sleeping pill, climb into bed and emerge when the danger has passed.