the post visit aftermath

Grief is such an interesting concept. Sometimes people move through it, sometimes they move past it, and sometimes you think you've moved through it and it hits you all over again and you realize you only need to move through it again.

When I think about what I battled back from after losing my mom, back in the Spring of 2010, it was a form of post traumatic stress I learned. And in that type of situation, whenever you are confronted with the environment, the people, the memories of the event that caused the trauma, it brings it all back in a way you can hardly prepare for. Unfortunately for me, that's what it feels like when I go back "home." I go back to a big house filled with memories yet so empty and silent. I go back to cold whether which will forever haunt me as it was the winter when we lost my mom. I go back to the memory of getting off the airplane preparing to help my mom fight for her life and then boarding the very next plane having just buried her. I go back to a place that always felt like home b/c my mom made it feel that way and now she's not there. I go back to a place filled with traditions that are now all slowly but surely changing.

It's hard, really really hard.

So I'm forever balancing the joy and excitement I feel when I return to see my family and bestest friends with emotions that I try so hard not to anticipate but then can't help but be overwhelmed by as soon as I'm there. And then I find myself feeling so grateful that something pulled me in the direction it did, when it did, to move to LA just before I lost my mom. I truly believe I'm meant to be here and while I so intensely miss my family and friends when I leave them behind and journey back to LA, I know and they know, this is truly what's best for me.