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.

You are made of the sea and the stars

Everyone who terrifies you is sixty-five percent water.

And everyone you love is made of stardust, and I know sometimes you cannot even breathe deeply, and the night sky is no home, 

and you have cried yourself to sleep enough times that you are down to your last two 

percent, but

nothing is infinite,

not even loss.

You are made of the sea and the stars, and one day

you are going to find yourself again.

- F. Butler 

A friend sent me this today...I find it haunting and beautiful all at once.  

I believe that there are times when you will read a verse or hear a song that touches on the precise feeling that you have and it is like the universe is saying to you '...I know.'  

I did not come across this quote on my own, a friend of the same name did and she thought of me.  I've been feeling, with my head so full and fast and furious that you cannot get through to me...but maybe, just maybe,  you found a way.

I choose to believe...in you.