So Long 2016

Hi babe-

I haven't come here to talk to you in a long long time.  October 14 was the last post...

I talk to you, all the time actually. I talk to you in my head, I talk to you through my tears, I talk to you out loud...I figure you must be laughing your butt off at all my talking. Do you hear me when I tell my self to 'please stop talking to yourself'. I do it to the point of ridiculous. They say smart people do it, talk to themselves, I only know that crazy people do it, so what does that make me? I think it's a thin wire I walk on, don't you.  haha

I feel like I'm a huge failure at grief, grieving. I don't think I'm doing it right.  Oh, I know, 'there is no right or wrong way to grieve', but that doesn't change the fact that I feel like I'm doing it wrong.

All the little idiosyncrasies that blossomed out of the ashes of this fucking nightmare never cease to amaze me, and boy do they mess with my head. What the hell is the deal with the phone and making calls that I need...what the hell is that? Huh? I needed to call and find out if my shop could do an oil change, scary I know, but it had to be done. For two days I thought about it to death until I drove myself crazy, day three I gave up, day four I finally called and they were closed due to the holiday. Nice, so instead of a $35. dollar oil change, I paid $72 plus all the crap they talked me into for a grand total of ONE HUNDRED TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS. Really?!?  Dammit, I hate that crap. Oh, I know I needed the air filter and probably the fuel treatment since I have a long commute, but the cost of upkeep on this damn car you had to have is killing me.  See how I did that, went from my fault to yours in one breath.  It's a thin wire, I'm tellin ya.

I've gotten all your signs, thank you. You have no idea (or maybe you do) how much I needed to see just one. It had been so so long since you spoke to me that way, Evelyn too. She talks to me with her name mostly. She is very frequently the name of the main character in the books I read, the free, no ones ever heard of books. The lead is always named Evelyn. It's bizarre.

Am I going to be this way forever David. Am I going to be alone for my forever? Will I ever be normal again? You have no idea how hard it is being me, getting through a day. These holidays have done me in. The get-together's are excruciating. I don't want to do them but I do. For me they are about being a part of something I no longer have. They are about family and I am without mine. Oh, I know I have GiGi, but barely.  For me, the holidays are a HUGE reminder that I am without my parents, without my children, without my husband. The working together to make holidays fun, the music and the cooking and the shopping and the wrapping and the decorating, all of it. It's gone for me. And it's hard. And I'm sad. And I'm lonely. Lonely as hell. And I miss you. God how I miss you David. Damn.

So, you've gotten so pretty awesome company lately, no?!? Down here, we've lost so many amazing actors and singers and protectors and everyone in between. It's gonna be a rockin New Years for you all up there. Enjoy...but keep your hands off Princess Leia man!  haha

I love you, as always. Help me be better, show me the way to do it. Love Evelyn, keep her safe, take good care of her, she died for you. She died for you.

It just dawned on me this very second...that you two were meant to go together. You two wanted to jump out of a plane together, I said not so much. You weren't supposed to come with me that day then I said okay. And in the end you two 'jumped' into the ocean together and were gone. Huh...I wonder...

Anyway, so long.

I hope you are well

Someone said to me...I hope you are well.

If being honest, I don't know how to answer that.

I've read books, I've read posts from other widows, I've read memes, where positivity reigns and higher powers carry you through the fire. The warmth of the sun lifts your spirits and memories heal your heart.

Well, I can't seem to catch the magic. Memories barely make me smile, right before I feel a rip inside my chest. Music makes my spirit soar just before it spirals down and crashes back into me and takes my breath away. The sun lights my world right before my skin turns cold and reminds me I am alone in this world, alone with my feelings, alone with my thoughts...alone with my longing for you.  Oh how I long for you, Lord have mercy.

I can't get past the want, the missing, the longing for you. For everything about you, for everything about us. I miss the other half of my memories, the other half that makes a whole thought...that makes sense. David, I miss you loving me. I miss the way your love made me feel. I miss that me so very badly. God how I miss that girl.

So, maybe I don't have the words to say how I am.

But you...well, I hope you are well, even if I'm not. xoxo

The Yearning is Killing Me

“Life will break you.

Nobody can protect you from that,

and living alone won’t either,

for solitude will also break you with its yearning.

You have to love.

You have to feel.

It is the reason you are here on earth.

You are here to risk your heart.

You are here to be swallowed up.

And when it happens that you are broken,

or betrayed, or left, or hurt,

or death brushes near,

let yourself sit by an apple tree

and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps,

wasting their sweetness.

Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”

― Louise Erdrich

Did You Hear The News!

The words I longed to say to you for six long years, the words that would let me feel whole and useful and needed and sane, the words that would have meant I was helping us, that I was important once again. The words I so wanted to give you...

I GOT A JOB...only now you aren't here to hear them.

Bittersweet.

Joyous.

Thankful.

Overwhelmed.

Sad.

To name just a few of the emotions slipping through my blood. Weaving their way around the fabric of my being, like an army of ants under my skin, searing a fiery path as they work their way out.

So many emotions that I don't know the words for but I know them by feel, they have been mine for a very long time. They have lived inside of me like a disease, I could trust that I was never alone because I had them...like them or not. I had them. My own personal bullies, picking and tearing and poking at the very thin thread that I hung from for so long.

This is new. This will take time to reach the part of me that can't feel the sun, and make me feel warm and safe again. This will take time for me to believe that I could, maybe, be okay.

But I will get there. I know I will. I know I will.

So yeah, I said those words through a barrage of tears yesterday and I say them to you now. 

I hope you are proud of me. I hope I've made you smile.

I love you David, always and still.

A Grey Sky, A Grey Feather

I took the dog out into the yard a little while ago, the poor thing has been dancing around for an hour but I was just too damn stressed to care. Nice Mommy!

I gave my 30 day notice on Thursday and applied for 3 more job board postings, I applied for 3 more job board postings on Friday, On Saturday I gathered with friends who all said "sleep on my couch, put your stuff in storage...stay."  One said he has two fists full of available positions where he works...everyone said "Job's basically yours."  But I don't trust that. I've been doing this too hard for too long to not trust that. There are fists full of positions all over the place, I know, I've applied to them ALL! I am still unemployed and looking at needing to be out of here by the 1st. That's three and a half weeks.

I'm not just unemployed, I'm not getting calls for interviews, I'm not even being noticed. I am standing here with my heart in my hands pleading for someone to see me, hear me, but no one will look. No one will take a chance on me. I don't have words to explain what that does to a psyche that is already as fragile as a butterfly wing. Each call that I do not get wipes away the slightest bit more of the dust that colors me so brightly, each night that I lay my head down without that call removes a tiny bit more until all that is left is the clear and skeletal remains that once was me. I worked so incredibly hard putting all my broken pieces back together again after you and Evelyn died, admittedly some pieces were lost for good, so I'm an incomplete picture, but I worked so hard at it and now all of that is in such jeopardy because the phone won't ring. Because no one sees me.

I took the dog into the yard and I looked to the overcast sky and asked "what am I supposed to do...stay or go?"...it was then that my eyes followed a grey feather falling from nowhere, land at my feet.

I don't know what that means.

The End Of My Rope

A long time has passed since I've written to you...I have been away. You know, the annual trip down South to be with family.  You are there, or some of your ashes are.  I can't think more on that though, it's too strange to think of.

I miss you David, God how I do. Years have gone by, but the soul twisting pain has not left me. It moves with me like a feather fine breeze that barely kisses the skin. It is a part of me that I've learned to hide so very well. People just don't want to know, don't want to see. It's a deformity people are far too uncomfortable with so you learn to hide, for them.

I'm in dire straits now love. Ha, when am I not it seems. I clawed my way to the surface, a process that has taken 3 years, only to find I am close to destitute. The insurance is almost gone. I have been rejected by more job opportunities than I can count on both hands and both feet and both of each of yours. The future looks bleak. I can't afford to stay in our home anymore, but I can't get into another place because of no secure job for a year or more.

What do I do? Arkansas looks like the only immediate option but I so don't want to move there...not again, It was not a good place for me...the things that happened there haunt me still and I fear I would never get back out. You rescued me once, who will rescue me again?

I'm scared.

I'm broke.

I'm alone.

I'm scarred.

I'm done.

Help me babe, hit me over the head with a lightning bolt and magically make me better. I've been climbing through shit storm after shit storm after shit storm for 20 years and it has taken a MAJOR toll on me...

Yeah...I'm done.

They Are My Comfort

“You let time pass. That’s the cure. You survive the days. You float like a rabid ghost through the weeks. You cry and wallow and lament and scratch your way back up through the months. And then one day you find yourself alone on a bench in the sun and you close your eyes and lean your head back and you realize you’re okay.”

– Cheryl Strayed

Hi my love-

Three years today, it's a disgusting thought, but it's reality. I think back to this day then and I shake my head. I'm able to smile at some of the memories but I have yet to reach a place where remembering is only a good thing. I smile, I do, I even laugh...a lot. I think outwardly I have progressed well. I can dance and sing and laugh like always in spite of being broken on the inside. It's funny how that happens.

I remember you getting all choked up and teary with pride listening to Like Eating Glass...song 4. I just rubbed your forearm and smiled. Even that is gone now...

I remember Evelyn hanging out a window laughing at us because we kept walking right past her when we first arrived. And I remember all her Neck friends kept saying "You have no idea how excited she is that you two are here".  Ugh...shaking my head.

There is so much more that I remember but I can't do it right now, I can feel myself getting pulled down and I just can't right now. I'm so tired of being in that place. It's not a good place, my breathing changes, I feel my heart beating in my throat and hear a ringing in my ears. It's too hard to be there just now. One day I will be able to only smile there, but not now.

What is it like where you are? Do you spend time with Evelyn? Do you miss us? I always wonder these things. I wonder if you two are friends where you are...do you protect and take care of her.  Does she help you too?  The not knowing is hard. The not knowing if you guys are okay. The need to console you and put my arms around you two because of what you experienced...it's crazy. The whole thing is, really. For you two, when it was over it was over. For me and others, it will never really be over. How unfair. How totally and completely un-friggin-fair. Deep sigh.

I just wanted you to know, I'm...okay. Not good, but I am okay. I have put my face to the sun many times and find great peace outdoors. The trees, the birds, the wind, and the scents and the sounds, they are my comfort.

I love you David...still. Don't ever lose sight of me love, please. I will always need you to find me.

I love you Evelyn...always.

Tell Me

I figured if, at any time in this experience, I was able to laugh, smile, feel joy, that eventually those moments would knit themselves together and create a new ground for me to walk on. That the 'new ground' would become the base for me to build a new life upon. 

That is what I figured, but I don't think it has happened that way.  I don't feel it. I'm not living, merely existing.

I still cry going to and from get-togethers, I still shake my head to dislodge the visions, I still struggle with the fact that it even happened...the accident. And worst of all, I honestly don't feel I have truly, fully accepted and mourned the deaths of you and Evelyn. Especially Evelyn. And me, looking my own death in the face, and then not. That what happened really, in all it's horrificness, happened. That what I saw and survived really actually happened. It is still a very real fear that if I 'go there' I will never come back.

I've wondered about my visions, about why they won't stop. And the sounds, the tremendous roar of the ocean, the screams, the wind, and the sputtering and choking...it's all too much. And yet I am thankful that I no longer smell it, because for many months after, I saw, heard and smelled that day.  What I've wondered is, are these sights and sounds in some ways like hands pulling me back to the beginning, insisting that I go frame by frame...moment by moment through it all again in order for it to become absorbed as it should be. I've wondered, but I'm not willing.  Do you think I should?

There are days I think my brain will surely explode with all that is going on in there. I hold my temples often thinking 'how do I make it stop'?  I'm not one for a 'quick fix' pill for anything in life, but I believe if there was one to make the brain train stop, I would swallow it happily.

Do you see me David? I know you probably don't recognize me but I thought maybe the heartstrings let you know it's me.  That under all this rubble the heart that loves you and misses you and longs for you is still there beating it's song meant only for you.

Come find me love, find me once again and tell me what to do.

Tell me how to keep going...

Deep Inside of Lost

I haven't come here in a while, I've wanted to, but I made myself not because I'm so tired of telling you I'm lost.  Telling you I miss you.  Expressing I'm scared.

But I am, and I do.

I am so frigging deep inside of lost that I'm petrified I will never find my way out.

I have been through SO much in my life but I'm strong, I pick up and walk through it...always. But THIS.  THIS has crippled me.  Mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually.

I have been circling the drain for so long now and I can't make it stop.

I am so fucking deep inside lost.

As Forward As I Can Go

Well, I have walked for one week inside this new year.  It's 2016, if you didn't know.  Another calendar year without you in it, 365 more days spent with the cold chill in the space you used to occupy. It's sad. So sad. 

I was lying in bed waiting for sleep to take me, I had my eyes closed of course, waiting for the frenetic spin of my mind to wind down and rest in peace and there it was...the last picture taken of you, seconds before you fell into your goodbye. WHY...I popped my eyes open and really focused into the darkness and said to no one "My God, you are really gone."  As sad and as lonely that I can be sometimes, it really doesn't compute that this is real. I know it sounds strange, I'm the one who lives it...it's strange, but even after all this time, which is a lot, but isn't, it doesn't fully sit in my soul that you are really dead. That day really happened.  Evelyn is dead too. It is in moments like this that I know what it is to feel your heart stop beating and your lungs squeeze shut. It's not a good feeling, because, well, I can feel it and I count until death gets me or everything winks back to life.  And if you think I can sleep after that crap you are wrong!

You died David. Are you okay with that? You walked through that door and left this life behind you. Are you as sad as me? Do you sit in the space next to me even though I can't see you?  Are you there now? Where are you...are you alright? Do you see Evelyn? Is she okay? The need to know these things swallows me whole.  I want to know if you two are okay and what you have to say about that day.  I mean, seriously, we couldn't have been having more fun and then SLAM, you guys were gone. What a cruel twist by the universe.

I cry so much, and I wonder if I will ever stop. Not long sobbing fits, but tears will stream down my face on most days at some point between Up and Down. The car and music is a HUGE trigger, I pretty much know I will cry sometime before the trip is over, whether to run errands or go to a friends house...I will cry.  It's great!  NOT!

I've pretty much determined those dreams I had were about moving on, I mean come on, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure it out, I just needed to blink and clear my eyes and I saw it.  But the thing is, I have moved on, I've gone as far forward as I can while sitting still.  There is nowhere for me to go. I know this is real, I know this really happened, I know you died and are never coming back, I know life as I knew it ended, I know my reality has been seriously altered and that I have to create a new one. I do, I know this, but where would you like me to go? Maybe that is the part I need your help with. That is the hard part now, starting from scratch a whole new life, dreaming new dreams, learning who I am now and going from there. Maybe that is where I struggle. The little piece of the old me that fights to stay present in a world that I just don't fit in anymore.  I don't know where I belong. The urge to run away is so strong. I want to pack what little I will need and go someplace new and figure myself out. I can't though, I have children to be near for, parents to care for. So I stay in a life I don't belong to anymore, a place I don't fit. 

I've gone as forward as I can go while sitting still.