The guilt trap

There has been, and continues to be a lot of mental gymnastics going on in my head when I take the time to deep dive into the events of the days right after Justin’s aneurysm. Very few people are privy to those emotions because for the most part, they are baseless pieces of self inflicted guilt that I pile on myself to try and make all of this make sense. Like if I replay the events of those 10 days over and over in my head, I can come up with a way that I could have changed the outcome. That I could find fault in the decisions I made, or something I could have done better for him; save him.

Survivors guilt isn’t always questioning why you lived and the other person died. It can also feel like you survived and you should have, or COULD have done more to save someone else. My logical side knows this to be untrue. It was 100% out of my capability to do anything more to save Justin. But my emotional side? Now THAT can be a real bitch sometimes. That’s the side where exhaustion and sadness convince my heart that I could have done more.

Walking this path has been the hardest and most challenging thing that I have ever done in my entire life, and most of the speed bumps and road blocks are self inflicted. You can make yourself believe anything, really.

Heart work is HARD work.

I have more good days than bad now, and for the most part my logical side overcomes the need to punish myself for ‘letting’ him die. Being patient with myself and putting down my bucket of guilt when it gets too heavy is something that I have to choose to do every single day.

I hope that if you are walking a similar path or are supporting someone else who is, you’ll try and set your guilt bucket down sometimes too. It’s heavy and it’s not meant for you to carry.

Until next time,

~A