It amazes me how trauma begets trauma, how one wound can call out to another across the years. This time of year is meant for remembrance. It is meant to honor a life well-lived, a man deeply loved, and the memories of laughter, wisdom, and warmth that still linger long after goodbye. It is meant to celebrate you, to speak your name with tenderness, to remember the good you left behind.
But grief has a way of softening the walls I work so hard to keep standing. The barriers lower, the heart grows raw, and the mind becomes vulnerable. What should be sorrow wrapped in love becomes something tangled and heavier. The sadness of missing you opens doors I did not invite open.
The dark thoughts creep in where only grief should be. Memories I have shoved into the void begin clawing their way back, trying to overtake the joy of remembering you. Instead of simply mourning your absence, I am ambushed by ghosts that do not belong here. Pain meant for one loss awakens pain from another time, another place, another wound still aching beneath the surface.
And then the spiral begins. My chest tightens. Panic settles in like a storm cloud. Anxiety spreads through me until even breathing feels like work. My mind races while my body begins to shut down, retreating inward as if still trying to survive something long past.
It amazes me, and angers me, that trauma steals even from sacred moments. That it can reach into remembrance and try to poison it. But even so, it does not get to take everything. It does not erase your life, your love, or the joy of having known you. It may interrupt the moment, but it cannot own it.
So I will breathe through the panic. I will steady myself in the middle of the storm. I will grieve you and celebrate you at the same time. And if the shadows come, I will remind them that this day belongs to love, not to fear.
-Bella Imperia
Bella Imperia: The Things I Don't Say 
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