Painful Regression

It feels like I am relapsing in grief. I thought I was "moving on" for a bit there, I liked it. I went about my work and my social life, going a few hours at a time forgetting that I had to take off my engagement ring because KC is dead. I was getting happy again. I went on dates a few times. I enjoyed the company of another man (well, boy really, as it turned out) and took comfort in the newly found realization that I may be able to have a crush on a guy while still holding on to the True Love that I shared with KC. But now, man. I am consumed with loneliness in a way I never have known. It breaks barriers like a child coloring outside of the lines. Reckless abandon. It crosses into every single moment of my life. The most joyful moments are tarnished by a heavy weight: I will never be truly loved again. This is not to say that I am not loved now, I know that I am. This isn't even to say that I will never know romantic love from a man again, I believe that I will. I just am not entirely sure that I will ever be able to again fully open my heart and leave myself vulnerable to this type of loss ever again. If I cannot open my heart to love someone else, I surely can never feel new love again, even if it feels true to the person on the other end.
This heaviness, it's weighs down every part of my day. Today I noticed that walking seemed tiresome. Just walking, not even walking briskly. I remember this feeling because it is how it felt to walk anywhere for the first 3 or 4 months after KC died. Like each step was a fucking miracle of science, how DOES she do it?! I am feeling this way again, 17 months later. I am feeling this weight in every moment and I don't know what to do about it. I try to delve into it, but I go numb. I try and distract myself, but I find that the more I try not to think about it the more I see KC everywhere. If it isn't KC I see, it's an engagement, a pregnancy, an ode to a life that was robbed from KC and I before we even got the chance to plan it. I hate that when I find out a friend got engaged that I instantly feel terror in my bones: I hope no one dies. I hate that when a friend of mine tells me they are pregnant, I instantly feel dark, angry jealousy. I hate that when I look at my niece and I hold her and sing to her I am thinking about how I will likely never experience birthing a beautiful child like her. I think about how she will never know her Uncle KC. I think about how all I want to do is protect her from the feeling I have in my heart, that bitter, sad, angry, empty feeling of grief, but I know that I can't do that.
So what do I do about it?
How do I get better?
How do I "move on."
How do you escape desperate, desperate loneliness when the only one who can take that feeling away....



is gone.