Control, After the Day Love Wasn’t Enough

It’s launch week for The Year After Kahlia.

From the outside, it probably looks like momentum. Movement. Progress.
Books landing in stores. Interviews booked. Podcasts lining up. Messages coming in.

From the inside, it feels like something else too.

Control. Or my attempt at it.

Since Kahlia died, my relationship with control has changed completely. Not in a neat psychological way. In a visceral, body-first way.

Time doesn’t behave properly anymore.
A week can feel like a month.
A month can vanish like an afternoon.

Waiting can feel unbearable - or strangely blank. There is no reliable scale. My nervous system doesn’t measure time by clocks now, it measures by threat, by memory, by emotional load.

And underneath all of it sits one sentence that still knocks the wind out of me when it lands:

I couldn’t save her.

I can be fine, functioning, writing, answering emails; and then it hits sideways. Not as a thought. As a physical drop. A collapse in the chest.

I couldn’t save her.
How am I supposed to live with that?
How am I supposed to trust anything after that?

People talk about surrender. Faith. Letting life unfold.

I understand the words. I even believe in the idea. But if I’m honest, my faith now stands on a cracked floor.

I had faith that love would be enough.
I had faith that showing up, listening, holding, fighting, advocating — would keep her here.

It didn’t.

That changes how trust works inside a person.

So now I notice what rises instead.

I organise.
I work.
I produce.
I push.

Mark and I are the busiest we’ve ever been. On paper it’s meaningful work; advocacy, writing, getting the truth about suicide and grief into the world. And it is meaningful. Deeply.

But it is also, if I’m brave enough to admit it, a form of control.

If I do enough, say enough, build enough, push enough - maybe I can hold the edges of the world still.

Grief takes away your biggest illusion - that you can prevent catastrophe through love and effort. Control steps in as the emergency replacement.

Not because we’re rigid people.
Because we’re wounded ones.

I notice it in small moments too. My patience is thinner. My startle response is bigger. If someone says, “Oh my god -” my body reacts before my mind does. I am braced for impact in a way I never used to be.

This is what happens when you’ve already received the worst phone call.

The nervous system stops assuming things will be okay.

I am slowly learning that control is understandable, but it is also exhausting.

That working without stopping is not the same as healing.
That producing is not the same as surrender.
That advocacy is not the same as safety.

And still - I am not ready to drop it completely. That’s the truth.

People like to tell grief stories with clean lessons at the end. I don’t have one here. What I have is awareness.

I see what I’m doing.
I see why I’m doing it.
And for now, that is enough.

Control isn’t my character flaw.
It’s my scar tissue.

And maybe, over time, scar tissue can soften - not because the wound didn’t matter, but because it did.