“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.
Kristen,
ReplyDeleteI've been doing a lot of hiding lately. At three years three months I am feeling a bit of a newer phase kicking in. I find myself on auto pilot. I am doing things that I couldn't do very well before now and the tasks consume my time and I tend to get lost in acting out whatever task it is. I am forgetting what it was like to have my husband near me 24/7. I am forgetting………and I hate it.
I hate it more than the nuclear meltdowns that reminded me daily (several times a day) while I cried about losing him. I hate life. More and more and more I realize that this IS my new normal and I am beginning to accept this is my fate and more than anything I want it to end. I really really want my body to stop living and yet every day it reminds me that I am still too healthy to die.
I beg the universe to see me as their next target instead of someone else and yet it refuses to comply. I am doing, constantly doing, but it is so empty. So so ridiculous. A folly.
I can find a way to laugh too. The Big Bang Theory. I can find a way to keep myself busy, TV, computer, painting old furniture, etc. I can talk a bit better to people in general without totally breaking down although that still happens. But I hate this. With a vengeance. I don't want to do any of this without him. I don't care what anyone says about how he would not want me to have to be this way. It doesn't matter. Nothing matters. How long will I be forced to live?
I too am okay. I have a place to live, food to eat, things I can do and people who care but it's not what I want. I just want my husband back and that isn't going to happen.
I just want his arms around me and to tell me that he loves me. So I can feel once again what it was like to have such love.
It's not right. It's just not right. I'm ok but it doesn't make me like it.