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.

Graduation Day...June 14, 2014

Oh how I wish you were here, it is such a huge day down here and you should have been here to reap the rewards.

Today your first born graduated High School.  He did it, God bless him, he really did it.

Did you see him babe?  Were you there?  Did you watch as his name was called and he walked so proud across the stage to receive that diploma?  I hope you did, I hope you saw it all and that you reveled in the joy of it.  

A Year That Was Only Yesterday

I'm standing at the edge of time, looking out over the endless sight of water.  

All around me is water and the wind.  I see blue and I see white and that is all.  

It is what I hear that is the thing...I do not see it but I hear it and with the wind I am wrapped in it...the screams.  I am fighting an invisible demon...the screams.  I feel them crawling all over my skin, through my hair and in my head but I do not see them.  Everywhere I only see the sea, I cannot move in any direction for it.   The wind holds me in place as the screams invade my body, invade my soul.  I look everywhere for the two of you but you are gone. 

 And then I wake up...

My eyes open and I can feel my heart beating fast and it is then that I see I am at home in our bed. There is no wind, no sea and no scream.  It was just a dream.  I never dream, I briefly wonder why I just did.  I climb out of bed but reach back to hold on to the edge as my feet hit the floor and reality slams into me like it has every morning for 365 days. It wasn't a dream, it is a reality, it is a memory that no other person on this earth has...only me.  I shake my head as a tear slips down my cheek, I take a deep breath and straighten my spine.  I open the bedroom door and look out, I am in the home that we created together and it is time to face another day.

I move about the house taking care of what needs taking care of.  Our birds, they are sitting on their perches waiting for momma to fill their tub with warm water so they can do their splash down...so cute, and for the next ten minutes the sound of very happy birds playing in the 'hot tub', wet wings flapping fills the house.  On to the coffee.  Empty the filter cup, select flavor, fill filter cup, push brew.  While I wait I clean up any mess left behind by GiGi in her haste to get herself off to school.  Coffee in hand I head into the living room and am greeted by two very cute little critters bouncing around waiting to be let out to play for a few minutes.  I'll sit here and drink my cup of coffee and read for a half an hour, that is as long as I will allow myself to sit idle. Critters away, coffee cup rinsed out I head into the bedroom to make the bed and it hits me. The scent in our room is a trigger, the candles, my perfumes, your colognes all form into a fist that hits me square in the gut and instantly I am bent at the waist from the enormity of it all, crying.  In a minute I will be okay, I wipe the tears and make the bed.  I remember when I got home from my last trip to AR, you surprised me with a bedroom makeover of sorts and you were so proud of your idea to get the wrinkles out of the blankets with the back scratcher...God how I miss your silliness.  Only for you it isn't silly...it's just you.

All these days have been spent in a state of the edge of panic.  That is, I'm in constant awareness that I walk through my days on the edge of a melt down but not quite.  My breathing is very deliberate, I'm always aware of the subtle changes in the slow draw in and the slow push out.  There are moments when it becomes more frenetic and when I notice that,  I shake my head and send the demons that haunt me scattering because at any given moment I can become unhinged.  I am learning to live like this. I am learning to live with the constant presence of the video playing in my head.  I liken it to when I was a kid doing homework with the stereo on, my focus was on the school work but my ear and brain could hear the music and sometimes a song would come that would draw me all the way in and away from the work. Now, I am focused on the day but sometimes the video draws me all the way in and all I can do is ride it out.  I do all this with a mask of 'normal' on my face.  If you were to ask anyone, I think they would say 'she looks great, I think she is doing okay'.  I'm not sure they would be totally wrong, from what I have heard and read, I think I am 'holding up' rather well.  I really am finding joy in the small things, the sun, flowers pushing their way to the surface again, time spent with friends and our children.   It's only on the inside that the sorrow and the broken lives.

Bed made, tears dried, it is now time for me to work out.  For the months of November, December and January I was rendered paralyzed.  I couldn't manage to do anything but the absolute necessities.  The adrenalin of fear and the anesthetization of shock wore off and six months into this dreadful journey I was stopped on a dime.  Unfortunately my poor body took the brunt of this inactivity.  Daily work outs are now a MUST again.  ( lol )  That done I juice, shower, and then sweep, vacuum and mop the floors.  Believe it or not you two are NEVER out of my mind, thoughts of you circle my brain like the ticker tape on the bottom of the t.v. screen, and it was only a matter of time before I would cry again.  Mopping the foyer floor my breathing took off and when I wasn't paying attention the video hit me hard, hanging on to the sideboard I cried in anguish for the third time today.  Hopefully this will be it for today, it is completely and utterly exhausting trying to navigate grief and keep the pain at bay.

Wiping the tears away I make my way upstairs again.  I need to empty the dishwasher and clean the glasses from the sink.  I use your bar glasses pretty regularly, you spent so much time collecting them and you loved them so much.  In the days since you two left I have learned that time is not a healer, some wounds can never be healed in the true sense of the word...it is nothing more than a string of seconds and minutes and hours where you learn to perfect your response time, to perfect your reactions, to perfect the mask that you wear.  It is a period of moments where I am learning how to live with a new self in a new world beginning all the way back from start.  I might be still crying every day but not as often or as long.   Time has not healed me it has only allowed me the opportunity to learn how to live with all that is trapped inside.  I think I am getting better at it.

When you have spent as many hours together as we have, EVERYTHING is a memory.  A sight, a sound, a scent, a word, a look, a room, a friend, a driving route, a food etc.  I mean everything triggers memories.  I remember the very first time I laid eyes on Evelyn since high school, it was at Laurel's house and she had just come from work.  She was wearing a white sleeveless shirt with a big flowery skirt and sandals that were one step above flip flops.  And David at the airport on October 8, 2009.  That memory I cannot visit right now, I am not strong enough for that.  For a year after that day I would bawl every time I remembered my first sight of you...I was so overwhelmed with love and emotion, remember babe?   Now I hear so often "He, they, will always live in your memories, which is true, but true too is, memories only stay alive in the reliving together, in the retelling of that shared experience.  "Hey, remember that time...". Without that the memory only fades away and soon too will die.  I am truly all alone with my memories of you, no one else can share in these with me and that is a hurt all of it's own.  I lost you, I don't want to lose our memories too.  

Ah, what more can I say?  I am learning to live again a stranger in an unfamiliar world.  I wonder Babe, do you still recognize me, for I am clearly not who you left.  Anyway...I put one foot in front of the other even if only going in a circle at this point.  A time will come when I have created a new me and the circle will open and I will step out into a newly created life.  Hopefully I will have all my old memories still intact but too I need to create new ones.  I need to be able to say remember when and hear back 'yeah I do...'.  I am working hard, trying to find the Joy (as Kristen always says) in each new experience and clinging tightly to the family we chose.  We together as a group have shared memories which we talk of often.  And each and every one of them has struggled to come to terms with all of this in their own way.  I think we as a whole have kept each other upright.  They have seen me in my darkest hours,  they have nudged me gently to keep on keeping on.  I love them in a way they couldn't know.

I still feel I will wake up one day and this would all have been a bad bad dream.  I mean how could it not be, we were so damn happy and having such an incredible day...how in all that is real could you and Evelyn have just vanished without warning?  You two, so very much the same person, so young and vibrant and full of life.  Ugh..I know I will never fully recover from this, I will never forget what I saw, I will never stop missing you two and I will love you both desperately until I am in your arms again. 

I pray you two are safe, and happy and at peace.  I hope I have made you proud.  I hope and I hope and I hope that you can feel me and my love for you always.  Please stay together, take care of each other and think of us down here from time to time.  We love you so, I love you so...and I can not wait to see you again.  I wonder if it will be like that magical night in the airport...remember David?

Now I must go do laundry.  Cheers!

It's The Dark Side for Me

Yesterday I awoke on the side of darkness, a place so void of light and hope and peace.  I lived alone in that space for all the hours of one day.  I fought and I clawed to try and get out but never seemed to manage it.  Defeated I could do nothing but ride out the wave and go wherever it would take me.  It was excruciating, it was intense and it was exhausting.  

Every day I see and hear my husband drowning.  Every day I see my friend floating out to sea.  I duck and bob and weave my way in and around these images day in and day out.  This day though I could not avoid...it was as though I was being held in place and forced to watch and watch and watch.  It brought me to my knees and the darkness swallowed me alive.

All the months that have passed and I still don't believe this is real, I still don't know how to process what has happened.  It was too fast, there was no warning and the white took you both. The love of my life and a dear sweet friend.  How could that be?  

I see it every day, how can I get well with the horror chasing me?  My only escape is sleep, when I sleep I am free.  I see no horror, I hear no screams, I dream no dreams.  I am able to go unconscious, find peace and gain strength to do it all again tomorrow.

Tomorrow I shall hope that the sun will shine for me.

August 7th

Extreme highs
Immensely low lows
lost time 
lost love
lost
lost
lost
smiling 
then not
crying
then not
alone
but not
yet am
breathing
but not
alive
yet not
but trying

I'm trying love, and I'm doing, and I'm inching my way through.  I just pray you will be by my side through this journey, you said you would be by my side for the rest of my life...I know I can't see you now, but I hope you are still there.

I love you David and I miss you big.

The countdown

You were always so big on the countdown...to when you would travel to me, or when I would come to you...the hours the minutes the seconds until we would be in each others arms again. Being separated was always so hard for you, for me,  and the countdown just seemed to help. You always did it...right from day one.  

I keep a countdown of my own these days, only mine doesn't seem to help with anything, it just is a reminder...a reminder of how long we have been separated, how long it has been since we have been in each others arms.  A reminder of how much time has passed since I laughed with, and hugged one of my very best friends, since we toasted to our lives that we were loving so much. It is a reminder of how much time has passed since you and she left, and I stayed.  A reminder of how many days I have cried hard tears for you, for Evelyn, for me, for our families...for our kids.

So here it is...Silly, I know, but there it is in terms you can relate to my love.

3 months or 13.1 weeks

92 days or 2, 208 hours

132,480 minutes or 7, 948, 800 seconds

Life is good, I have always said so.  I have worked very hard to always see it that way, no matter what.  This circumstance won't change that, cannot change that...I won't let it. 
I still feel that life is good.  I know that I am a little lost right now, having a very difficult time seeing through to the light but I must do it.  I must see the good in everything or ALL of this will have been for nothing.  I know there is a reason I was left to walk away.

David, I am so sad and broken.  Some days I don't feel like I can even stand up but I do.  I do it all and I don't think most people I see would even know how bad off I am right now.  I work hard at being 'normal', everyone has enough on their own plates, they don't need to worry about me too.  Besides, this is my gig, my experience, my journey.  There isn't one single thing anyone could do or say to change it for me.  I am the creator of my own life. Only I can choose to lay down and cower from what the universe throws at me...or stand as tall as I can, with my chin held high and tears in my eyes...and dance.  And I choose to dance, to love life, to gaze at the beauty of this world that I live in, to stand in awe by the ocean as I have always done.  I choose to live for me, for my family, for my friends...I choose to live for you my love and for Evelyn.

Ours...2010

Evelyn 

Best Sisters...

Best friends...

I may no longer have the privilege to have you at my side for all of my life, or to gaze into your beautiful beautiful face, or to smell that wondrous scent that is uniquely you, or to lay my hands on you and kiss your perfect mouth.  But I have all those moments, from when I was lucky enough to have it all with you, stored safely inside my soul.  I go there often and I break down hard when I do... for the loss, for the joy, for the beauty of it all.  And when I leave that place and come back to the now, I smile and wipe away the tears,  because I know that I was so very very lucky and so very blessed that you loved me so deeply.  That you spent so much time looking for me,  that you found me, and that we were husband and wife...we were David and Kristen Machado.

L O V E

Woo Hoo!  How freaking lucky am I?  

So thank you my David, thank you for finding me, for loving me and for giving me what we had. I hope that where you live you are happy, safe, free and whole again.  That you can see me and watch over me and that you know how adored you are.  You are a special, special man.

And David...I hope you still dance too.

Peace, love and happiness on this 92nd day.