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.