Four Fucking Years

It is coming up on four fucking years. I don't know how that can be. I remember when I could barely summon the energy to say one year, two...now, four?

It is painful down here, let me tell ya. And that story is getting fucking old!  I have become the master of disguise, I am the happy, upbeat, bubbly girl at work. Everyone thinks so, everyone says so. What they can't see is the excruciatingly lonely, scarred, sad and scared girl behind the mask. They don't see or know the me that I hide. Who would want to, that shit will bring a person down man. No one wants that. So the lonely piles on.

I don't know how to change, I don't know how to get better. I do all the things I know to do...focus on the positive, let the feelings come, journal, talk about you, keep busy, stay positive, stay positive, stay positive...UGH. Stay fucking positive my ass!!!

Tell me, what is positive about being penniless? What is positive about the prospect of being laid off for several weeks, months without pay?  Where will that put me? God!!! What is positive about being so desperately lonely? What is positive about seeing life around you move forward while I sit alone doing nothing? Always alone. I can't just go out to a bar and stand there asking someone to talk to me, I can't afford to. It's not normal. I couldn't if I even wanted to. These aren't excuses, just reality.

No one knows the depths of what happened. They only know the hard cold facts. And really, that is enough...enough for a lifetime of lifetimes.

What a person doesn't see is the raw, exposed nerves left in ruins when half of you has been ripped away without any warning. Not that warning could have helped much but to have seen it coming may have made a teeny tiny difference. I could have braced myself, grabbed hold of the 'oh shit bar'. You know, the one above the door in a car. The one you grab and say oh shit when the person driving almost hits something. Yeah...you know the one.

To wake up looking into the eyes of your lover, doing what lovers do, running off for a day of sun and fun and friendship...blinking and it's gone. You're gone. She's gone. Only me left standing wondering what the fuck just happened. All of it...just gone. NEVER to be seen again. Love stays intact, but tenderness, touch, expressions, conversations, intimacies, memories, safety, companionship, togetherness, laughter...our laughter. It's all ripped away with a blink. One damn blink. Gone. I was just looking at you, I took your picture...I have it still. That last picture. I blinked and then there was nothing. I heard you call, I couldn't save you. I tried, I tried. I tried. 

And now...it's four years later and the pain is still raw, I've just learned how to not wince. I've learned how to walk through my days with my skin peeled back and not let anyone know I hurt. I've learned to stop myself from screaming at the well intentioned who tell me I'm not alone, I'm never alone. They know not what they say. It's okay. I love them anyway.

I know a girl who just lost her mother and she came to me and said you know what I'm going through because you lost your husband. I told her, No. "No I don't. I have my mother still. I have not had to sit by her side and watch her morph from the mother I know to one dying from cancer. I do not know that kind of pain and I would never pretend to. I do however have a very close personal relationship with grief and I can tell you a little of what will come and how I dealt with the moments that turn into days that turn into weeks. I can tell you to let it all come as it will, how it will wash over you when you least expect it and that all you can do is hold on as best you can until it passes. I can tell you to breathe, and I can tell you to forgive the people that try to do and say the right things. They mean no harm, they are just ignorant to the issue. I can tell you you must let go of the ones that will try to bring you further down and to give yourself permission to say no and to be selfish on your own behalf because now it's just you looking out for you. I can tell you this road will be long and hard and that I will always be available and willing to listen to you talk or cry it out. I can tell you I know grief and it is hard and I understand only this part of what you are going through."  Her situation has brought me back so very far, or maybe, hopefully it has only brought all that forward so at least I don't need to start all over. God, I could never start over from then, I wouldn't make it.

Do you hear my thoughts of wanting to die? Do you hear me when I think I'm just wasting space and time being here still. It's strange, I'm not a mess in the corner of a dark room wanting to kill myself. It's not like that at all. I just can't figure out the point of why I am here. I have no family around me, I am hanging on by a hair financially, I give a whole new meaning to paycheck to paycheck. I don't see a way to make things better for myself...all my trying be damned. I just wonder what the point of going on is. I have no love, I have no life and I'm on the brink of destruction. So why? Can you tell me? Am I wrong? If ever a girl needs her person but her person is gone...and there lies the crux of it all. Loneliness.

So I write, I get it out, I pretend I am writing to you. It doesn't change, but it's out there now. Isn't that what they tell you to do. Yeah...whatever.

So love, do you think I am doing well four years later? 

Define well.