Living Two Lives
A few days ago, I was asked by The Compassionate Friends if I had a piece of writing for their next newsletter, something that dealt with Father’s Day and how fathers coped. I had a look back through the blogs, and also at all the other previous Wednesday Wisdoms and, then went to the relevant sections of the book. There wasn’t anything specific that worked so I wrote the piece from scratch. I wrote an honest perspective of what Father’s Day feels like for me, and has done since Evie died. After I had sent it, my initial reaction was that I had a ready-written piece for the blog in mid-June. Then I read it again and changed my mind.
The life that I now live is a world beyond what I knew before and even though the piece isn’t particularly raw or angry, I realised that the muggles out there wouldn’t see it for what it was. It was at that point that it dawned on me that I still censor what I do and say for the benefit of others. It used to be that I did this to shield them from the pain. To protect them from a world so alien that they couldn’t possibly understand it. Now though, my reasoning is very different. Evie died 2 years, 3 months and 4 days ago. To me it could have been this morning. The image of her in bed is as strong today as it has ever been. But for the rest of the world, life has moved on. We’re ‘old news’. Yes there’s sympathy, understanding and even empathy, but that’s where it ends. So when I write a piece for this blog, or anywhere else that is for wider consumption, I am censoring what I feel to make it palatable for the majority. It isn’t about me being angry or ranting, it is about the fact that unless you have lost a child, the subject itself simply isn’t digestible. Like the Doctor Who episodes when you were a kid that made you hide behind the sofa, the facts of a child’s death make you squeamish.
What that means for me in real terms is that the audience that I can be open with is quite small. The bereaved parent community ‘gets it’ but needs a break from their own pain. Listening to someone else carries its own pain for them. Time is my worst enemy because I am stuck on 11 Jan 18, unable to move with time as everyone else does. While my ability to carry the pain has changed, that doesn’t mean that it has lessened in any way. But the way that I communicate what this world of mine feels like has changed too. Censorship is all too alive.
Is there an answer? I doubt it, I have to accept that I now live two lives; a real life at home and with my new friends within the Compassionate Friends, and a public life that is a filtered me, a me that others can now live alongside - all socially distanced of course.
