A few years ago, I made myself a weighted blanket. I’ve always been more comfortable if I’m holding a pillow or blanket on my lap or torso. Weird. I know. Even as a passenger in a car, I’ll often tuck my purse or jacket between my body and the seatbelt strap because of the gentle pressure it’ll apply in place of the light, skittish touch of the seatbelt. My weighted blanket quickly became my favorite blanket, especially if I was anxious or not feeling well.

The pressure of the blanket is just right–enough to ground me without making me feel trapped. I love that blanket.

The constant weight I feel now is different. I didn’t choose to drag this weight up my body and tuck it under my chin. I didn’t build this weight out of soft flannel and fleece in soothing colors and patterns. I didn’t select anything about this weight. It drags me down and holds me down like no blanket I’d ever own.

Grief has climbed on top of me, smothering me, and it is no snuggly baby or calming blanket. It’s fully grown, and sports pockets loaded with weight. Weight of longing and regret, of guilty questions and dark imaginings, of miserable firsts–birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas. Weight I do not want but cannot throw off and leave behind.

Weight that threatens to suffocate me.

But then someone slips an oxygen mask over my mouth and pries up a corner of grief, easing the terrible pressure. Lifting a bit of the weight.

That oxygen is out there—I know this. It’s a short walk or drive away, or in a classroom across the hall. It’s ready and waiting in messaging platforms, on demand in my contact list, awake in the middle of the night in online support groups. And, although sometimes weak, it’s in me. The oxygen is in what I know and believe. The words I write and share are oxygen.

These days, though, I’m so grateful for the people who can see me struggling for that breath—the people who gently place the mask on my face, peel back the grief, and tuck my weighted blanket under chin.

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