The last time I saw my therapist, she gave me an assignment. She wanted me to think about what my life would look like when I was 94% healed. What would I be doing? How would I feel? Things of that nature.

I said, “What does it mean that my initial reaction is that I can’t imagine that?”

She said, “It sounds like you’re not feeling very hopeful and that’s why I’m giving you this assignment.”

On the drive from therapy to the office, I started thinking about my assignment. My cousin whose mother passed away about five years ago told me she just started feeling “better”/”normal” again. So I used five years from now as my starting point.

Five years from now, I’ll be 40 years old. My first thought was I hoped I had a family of my own. A husband and some kids. Honestly, I was disappointed this was the first thing I thought of.

It’s just so…pedestrian. A single woman hoping she gets married and has children. My God, could I be any more cliché? You couldn’t think of anything more significant, Sheena??

Honestly, it irks me that I want to get married. I don’t want to want it. But I do. It irks me because the desire is so utterly basic, but it also irks me because I’m a control freak and for now, acquiring this desire is completely out of my control.

By that I mean, I no longer concern myself with placing myself in the path of eligible bachelors, including going on dating sites. It just seems so trivial to me. Now, you may be thinking, how is it trivial if you want to be married?

Well, let me answer that. Do I want to be married? Yes. But I’ve dated guys I’ve met on the Internet, I’ve gone speed dating, I’ve dated guys I’ve met in clubs, I’ve done it all. At this point, I think I’ve done enough. If I’m going to meet someone, he can come to me. He can find me. You may think that’s me stacking the deck against myself. Maybe it is.

I don’t care. It won’t be the end of the world if I don’t get married or have children. I used to feel that it would be, but not anymore. My world already ended.

When I’m 94% healed, I don’t think I’ll have these emotional ups and downs as often. I also think I’ll be able to think of my grandmother without feeling intense pain. I’ll still miss her, but I’ll be able to think of the happy times we had together with a smile on my face instead of being full of pain and a sense of loss every time she crosses my mind.

I hope at 94% healed I can feel true joy in my heart again. I hope I can say, “I’m happy” and mean it. Because right now, I’m just doing the best I can under the circumstances.

I hope I get to the point of being 94% healed. Right now, it seems very far away.

P.S. My flare-up is over and I’m healthy again! I thought that would make me feel a lot better, but I only feel somewhat better. I still feel really sad and angry a lot of the time and there are very few people I desire to be bothered with. This is just another stop along the road of grief I guess. I want to feel better, but I don’t know when that’s going to happen.