On doing "better"

I wrote this in February. It's now June. I found it tonight and it still is absolutely true.

"I don't want time to heal me. I want time to set me ugly and knotted with loss of you, marking me. I won't smooth you away." ― China Miéville

"So you're doing better, that's great, huh?"
::cringing:: "Um, yeah, I don't know. I guess. It's complicated."

This conversation has happened probably a dozen hundred times. I know it comes from a place of love, support, and encouragement. There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to be glad with me that I am functioning reasonably well.
Except I don't want to be doing better. I just don't. And I am in good company. (My fellow bereaved moms and I are doing our secret handshake now. Just kidding, we don't have a secret handshake, we just pass the tissues.)
Doing better means I'm farther from Eli emotionally. When I last held him I was shattered. In the days and weeks following I was such a wreck I could hardly leave my house. Any task was overwhelming. To be functioning at life now feels sort of good, but it also reveals how far away I am from the person I was the last time I saw Eli. That is a thorn in my side.
Doing better means I'm farther away from Eli in time. The fact that my pain has not lessened, but become familiar and easier to tuck away means I have had practice in dealing with it. Practice over time. So much time has passed since I was last with Eli. But then I'm really still in the beginning of this journey of survival. It just feels like it's been so long.
Everything is different. I am different. I hate it.
It's good that I'm doing better. But it hurts, too, to be doing better. My brokenness keeps me close to Eli. My brokenness proves to the world he was here; he lived. I'm not just letting that go.
I'm so proud he was mine.