Isolation

I was waiting for the day, anticipating it.
I knew it was coming, but the when escaped me. But when it did come, I wasn't nearly as prepared for it as I once thought I would be.
It was well meant, a comment from my mother. I know she only cares about me, that she hates to see this grief destroy me. She doesn't understand this grief. She's watched her child sick, clinging to life, this is true. I was a sick child, nearly dying many times. But she never watched her child die.
She asked me when I was planning on going back into the world.
I haven't been around people since her death. I've gone grocery shopping, watched children for friends so they could re-connect with their spouses, gone to family dinners and Thanksgiving celebrations. I've done all of this without her.
I haven't gone back to the place where all my friends meet on Friday evenings to talk and laugh. I haven't done that without her yet. I don't know if I can.
But my mother asks me when I will return. She plans my schedule. "You'll go the beginning of November," She declares.
I try to argue my way out of it.
"I have friends," I say, making reference to the other people who work at my job, referencing my parents and my siblings and my extended family and my husband and his extended family.
"I go out," I say, making reference to the groceries I get and the job I must go to and even that one time I went to my friend's baby shower.
"I'm not a hermit," I say, justifying watching television for hours as an activity.
"I went out today. I went shopping, with you. We went out for lunch and I bought a new sweater," I tell my mother.
"You need to get out and see your friends, people your own age. You need to accept that this is the way your life is going to be," She says gently.
And I know she's right. No amount of seclusion will bring back my daughter.
I have been avoiding them, these friends of mine, the people I used to get together and laugh with and talk with. I can't laugh anymore. I can't talk about simple little things anymore.
Ever since the death of my little girl, they haven't said a word to me. I know they know. I think they just expect me to be ok, to be over it. After all, she was sick, so sick.
They didn't know her like I did.
Maybe they just don't know what to say, I wonder. Maybe my grief is scary for them, and they don't know how to handle it. Maybe, I think, I haven't given them the chance.
I'm not the same woman I was before the most precious thing I was ever given left. I don't know how to accept that the one thing I wanted more then anything else is gone. I didn't know I wanted her so badly until she was gone. Now it's all I can think about.
I wonder how long it will be before I can go and be with my friends, go out on a Friday night, listen to people talk and laugh even if I am still unable to join in the talking and the laughing.

Isolation, I am in isolation. I don't like being in isolation, it's awful lonely here. I don't know how to do anything else, though. I don't know who to be. I need to get out, I know I do. I need to get out of my house, change out of the yoga pants I've been wearing for 3 days straight, shower, go see people. I have people counting on me, people who need me, I don't have the privelege of dying along side my little girl.
I know I need to get out, need to rejoin the world of the living. But I feel like I don't belong there anymore. I feel torn between 2 worlds. While part of me wants to get out and be around people another part of me just wants to lock myself away. I don't know how to live without her.
How long will I be stuck between 2 worlds? How long will it be before I can go out and listen to people talk and laugh and not burn with anger? How long will I be stuck in isolation? How long until I accept that this is my reality, that she's never coming back?
How long? How long? How long?