Where now when there’s no tomorrow?

“Anger and sorrow were all I had left
when I’d run out of the shocking numbness of disbelief.”

I had no idea. No concept for what had just happened or that this could happen or, for that matter, that it would make me feel this way. I can’t get over the shock to be honest. It just goes on and on, day after day. Every day’s the same! Utter purgatory. I’m bewildered.

But just when I expect that this is what I’m to expect, something else breaks through—something that feels far worse, if that’s even possible. Really, I do not know but I feel I must decide that this is crueler because of what it makes me into, a sobbing wreck bristling with fury.

I’ve lost everything. So many of us! Well, not everything, but it feels like there is no end to the loss. Every minute it seems I realise another thing that’s gone—irretrievably vanquished. The reminders are everywhere. How can life be this cruel, that everywhere I look is loss, and in this inescapable torment I now remain, with no hope of returning to what was. And to think how differently I redefine the word “gone” now!

My life wasn’t perfect, don’t get me wrong, and that life sure had its problems, but this is next level and I just cannot cope. Every time I wake up to the most horrendous nightmare.

Here I am bawling my eyes out, again! Those words, “that life,” reverberate in the caverns of my soul. As if it were never my life all along. It was, I know it, but all we worked for: GONE! I feel absolutely detached from what was, and what scares me most is I feel I, as a person, am lost to me! Far out, how can that be?? And yet, to add even further confusion, at least we have our lives to be thankful for. They are just so hard to live now.

How is it that “life” can feel so hellish? How is it possible to feel the way I do? How is it that nobody warned me that life can become like THIS?

How do I manage today let alone tomorrow? I’ve lost touch with and all hope of tomorrow.

So many unanswerable questions. God, if you exist, show yourself! Rescue me from this! If you would do that, I will devote my life to you.

This article written in the grieving first person is devoted to the people and the communities who have lost so much through the Australian 2019/2020 fires.

Photo by Michael Held on Unsplash