Chutes and ladders

Grief is like a terrible game of chutes and ladders.

One day you feel strong enough to climb those first few rungs, to move your game piece forward, then the next day youre tumbling down this terribly long slide, slipping past the point you started from, and moving your piece back to the start. 

Feeling  defeated  you wonder how you will ever feel brave enough to take another turn, put your foot on the bottom step of the ladder again, knowing you will possibly and most likely end up feeling worse then you did before. 

I wake up in a fog, going through the motions of my day wondering what thing will pull the trigger to my emotions this time, what will send me down the chute.

To you it can be the littlest thing, a smell, a song, a color, but to me, it's the one thing that stops me in my tracks, knocks the wind out of my lungs, and opens the valve to the dam that my tears were safely, but only momentarily, tucked behind. 

The game, no matter how many times it's played, is never the same.

It's exactly the same with grief.