Two weeks left...

before I am a year into this lifetime sentence.  Last night was bad, today is even worse.  My heart is broken and some days it feels as though it will never be whole again.  It's unfair when a 6'4" hole was torn from a 5'3" person, today I feel like there is very little of me left.



 My eyes are raw, they itch.  I am aware that I look like I've been not sleeping - though I have.  There is a heaviness that I can't escape.

 My in laws, who I love, are planning to come and visit next week, but I feel even more raw now than I did the last time they stayed.  I don't want them here, yet I don't want them not to come.

 I can't bear being touched.  The thought of it makes my skin itch.

 It's only been a few days of this - this time, I know it's acute depression and that it comes and goes. I know this time it's coinciding with the anniversary.  Knowing doesn't help.

 I have a few weeks before my busy season starts, then I will be so blessedly busy again that I will   not have time to think.  I will not have time to feel.  I will forget how alone I am without him.  I will forget that he left me alone and that my worst fear has been realized and that I am, again, alone.

 I have been clearing out my house in preparation of both the visit and being that busy again.  Organizing and finishing up decorating my house - in anticipation of a life I do not have.

 I've been looking around at Spring's start in my yard and it's so beautiful.  I love all of the buds opening and the flowers starting to bloom.  The loveliness makes me ache.  He was the photographer.   I am the impostor.

 I am a woman with a camera wishing I could show off to him what I learned from him.  I wish I could see through the lens what he saw.  But he is not ever coming back, he will never see.

And there is nothing that fills that hole.  There is nothing that is going to make this right.  Will I ever not ache?  I hurt.  I hurt all of the time, I just don't look at the wound much.  I hide it away.  Who wants to see that kind of pain, this much loss?  Who wants to be close to someone this damaged?

 As it turns out, there are a few people who have been both available and persistent.  I don't open deeply easily.  If you asked me 5 minutes after writing this if I was ok?  I'd tell you that I was.  These annoying people keep at my door, push to have me participate in life with them, are on the phone, pinging me online.  These pushy, pushy people.  I am ever grateful.

 The truth is, without them, I probably wouldn't be breathing.  I am not ever intending to leave, I can't even imagine it.  But heartbreak?  I think it really can kill you.  There were a few days through this year where I didn't know if I could climb out of bed, where making food to survive was too much.

 One of my friends says that this last bubble of time before the anniversary is just the worst and then things ease a bit.  I hope so.  I hope so.

 In the mean time, there is this time.  This achy, slow moving, torture of time that I must endure and move through.  I am trying to find ways to make it more enjoyable, but it is hard going.  I am going to be ok.  I know I will.  I am just not ok right now.

Life goes on...

 

On March 6th, eleven months past the death of my best friend, one of my dearest intimates died giving birth to her long-anticipated first born child, a son.

T.J. and I were just about as opposite as two women who liked each other could get in many ways, and yet man, we were inseparable for about seven years.

 I don't have a lot to say right now, except that I am so glad that we had time to reconnect, time to talk again, time to be excited about your new adventure, time to be honest and time to express our love and friendship again.  You were, you ARE such an influence to who I am now.  I am convinced that I loved the man I loved because he was so like you.  I'm going to miss you, 2 am never passes when I am awake that I don't think of you.  I hope your precious Jesus is giving you the welcome you deserve and that heaven is far more awesome than you ever anticipated.  I hope that all of the questions have answers, the struggles make sense, and your purpose is fulfilled. 

I miss you, I love you and I believe I'll see you again.

 

P.S. Your baby is just beautiful.  You did good, mama. 

Turning a corner...

 I got brave and checked out a new beach on Sunday.  It had been recommended to me last Autumn, but it seems that every Sunday (my regular beach walk day) it was either too windy or wet, and I didn't know the area well, so I didn't know what I was getting into.  There is smart and stupid and I prefer to err on the side of safe when walking alone.  Sunday was sunny and really pretty. 
Adventure Ho!

 After all the plodding, pondering, planning, and praying I've been in a pretty good place.  Who I am is who I am, and I've been working on letting me like me where I am right now.  I think I'm in a pretty good place with that.  I am combing through all the things I have to see what I can let go of again. When I moved here I packed anything that felt important and now nearly a year later, it's time to let go of things I don't really need anymore - I'm sure I'll have a few more rounds of that as I go.

 I feel like I am starting to crest a ridge of this grief.  I remember going through this when my dad passed.  That certain things would fill my eyes with salted water unbidden, for him it was Panera, Lunds Grocery, driving past HCMC, or seeing something that I wanted to tell him about, like a movie he'd have enjoyed, a book, or something that would have piqued his interest. I'm starting that again.

 On Wednesday, it will be 11 months.  I notice the tears are like Summer rain showers, the ones that come from the tiniest cloud, pour rain for a moment and then are gone before you can even take cover.  Little things, like commenting that a child carries the same expression he did, squeeze my heart, crumple my face, and start me leaking.  I miss him in the ways of the every day familiar.  Yet, I'm making food he didn't like and enjoying it because I can, I don't have to hide the milk when I need some for a recipe because he'll drink it all, I never have to check on how much XYZ is left, because I am the only one who uses things here and my memory is pretty good.

 Sometimes this is really hard, because I spent 15+ years learning his stuff, and now I have to unlearn.  Yet, the mark of my person lingers.  Not a bad thing, just what it is.  I know you've gone though loss - divorce, loss of a friend, lover, parent, grandparent, spouse, child... the possibilities are endless, it's the thing of life that we all end in death.  Yet there is beauty here.

 Not in me alone, but D is remembered and lives on.  Your person lives on in you.  Part of loving is missing the beautiful, elegant, difficult and frustrating things about them.  Those things that no one in the world knows about that person because of your unique interface and time together.  Those things that are, in all practicality lost because those are unique to you two.  Those things float up from the depths of ourselves and remind us of our love, remind us of our loss, just remind us.

So, I am here.  It's a good place.  I am healthy and safe enough to remember, to miss, to cry, to go on.  I am strong, resilient, I am mostly happy and sometimes in pain.  I might not know who I will be tomorrow, but I know who I am today, and I like me, I like that a lot. 

I really am in a pretty good place.