I've always talked about it openly, but in a way I've never accepted that it's something that happened in my life and experience. Talking about it has been a way to rationalise something that doesn't need to be rational, intellectualising an emotion that should probably come naturally.
I'll talk about it to friends, but I'll never look them in the eye when I say it. Because it feels like a lie, like I'm making up a story about someone's life and attributing it to myself.
I haven't spoken to family about it. I've been too scared to ask about how she was before I knew her, or hear the stories about her from other people, because I was scared that those memories would overwrite my own. And the truth is, they already have.
I'm 6 years on and I've forgotten a lot. I think I accidentally forced it. In trying to forget about the sadness of it all, I stopped trying to remind myself of my life before 2016. And everything just, faded.
I think it'll come back, with time and stories. But for now that all hurts in a way I barely understand.
I'm not a very emotional person outwardly. I try to never say anything that genuinely makes me seem vulnerable, or at least anything that I feel makes me vulnerable. It's always just a story about someone else, if it's honest.
I think my family is the same. Sort of stoic and weathered. I almost assume I'll never get to speak about my mum with any of them in a way that it feels like this has happened to us, because selfishly I don't want to reckon with it.
I almost struggle to say the word 'mum' these days, because 6 years without her has been an entire life to me.
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