Day 483

I'm not keeping this up very well. It's been a long road full of major bumps. Some days i feel like things are getting easier, and the next day i take 3 days back and feel like i've never felt worse in my life. I still haven't completely grasped it, that he's not here. that he's not coming back. I'll see something or hear somethign and for that split second i'll think "robert and i should do that". i miss him so much i can't put it into words. i miss his face and his voice, his hands, the feel of his hair. i miss waking up next to him, and holding his hand as we walk. do you know what you see ALL over the place at Target? Happy couples holding hands. They're everywhere. That used to be us.

I've just started the trial of reducing one of my meds. i want to be off them. i hate them and the way they make me feel if i miss one. i'll stay on whatever is absolutely necessary, but there are days when i think that's nothing. there are days when i know that it's not. there are days where i cant get certain images out of my head and my anxiety builds up, slowly now, not the flashes of it like i got before where it came on suddenly. and i'm bitter. i'm bitter about people who lie about having experienced this type of loss. and yes, they are out there. one day it will happen and you will understand that it's life shattering. it's not a means to get a few people to pat you on the back and soothe your ego.

So where am I in my grief? it depends on the day. Some days I'm deep in the muck. Some days I'm angry. Some days I'm almost normal, with a new veil of loss that somehow never goes away and tints everything I see and do. And some days I'm a crying mess... sometimes it's for a minute, sometimes an hour. Some days I can force myself to block it out. Most days I cant. I lost my whole world. The hole his absence left inside me won't ever be filled. I will never again be the person i was when i was with him.

Day 429

I'm still so broken. Distraction, distraction, distracted. Why can't I just have him back?

An aside

there is nothing i want to do but sleep and eat.

Day 414

I just spent an hour reading old text messages and it was like he's still here. This widow life is bullshit. I want to do a millio things with him and I'm not sad, I'm pissed. I'm angry as hell that we got robbed of all of our plans. I'm pissed that Bodhi lost her dad. Yes, I'm sad for my dog. I'm sad for Skwerl, because her life sucks now and Robert babied her. How is any of this fair? What did I do so terribly wrong that I earned this? fuck this.

Day 402

It's Easter Day, 2015. This is my second Easter without Robert. I didn't get a Reese's egg from him, that he would go out and get, even in the middle of the night, because he knows I love them. And it's not any easier to not get one. Everyone says the first holidays are the hardest, and while that's true, that doesn't make the rest "easy", just "easier". And that, my friends, is a very important difference.

Happy Anniversary

Today should be out 4th wedding anniversary, but we got robbed. I love you.

Day 387

Its Saturday, and I'm certain this must be the longest day in the week of any widow. I got up this morning and did little of any use (worked on but didn't complete my creative writing homework). Then I took a nap for several hours before getting up and having dinner, and working more on the aforementioned homework. Now it's 8 and I'm ready to wrap things up and head home to watch tv and drift off to sleep in a medicated haze. tomorrow will likely be just as bad. it's not that i have nothing to do. i have tons to do. i just dont have the will to do any of it. i still owe people thank you cards for gifts they sent a year ago. all i do is eat and sleep and work. it's a stupid cycle that makes my will to live even weaker.

Day 385

When I went to Vietnam, I had to take of my wedding and engagement rings. That was REALLY hard for me, but the idea of anything happening to them was worse, so I did. Well, it was a struggle to get them off, because I've gained weight over the last year, and getting them back on just wasnt happening. Today I decided to put back on my original engagement ring and wedding ring. The mismatched set that he replaced with the Tiffany set I've been wearing with adoration since he got it for me. It feels comfortable, and comforting, to have my rings back on. Like I'm married again. Like I have a husband again. Like he never died...

I should've done some creative writing revisions tonight, but I didnt. Guess there's always tomorrow. I put everything else off, so why not this?

Day 376

The anniversary of his passing came along and hit me like a million anvils being dropped on me all at once. I thought I would be fine, but starting at about 3 days before, I was just a mess. A mess of memories. I knew every "last time"... the last time we got Starbucks, the last time he kissed me, the last nap we took. It was excruciating to relive every happy memory that lead up to the worst night of my life. It didn't help that my therapist moved out of state in November, that I was off my meds and that I hadn't been to widow group since December. It doesn't help that he still feels so much a part of my life. That I look at his face in pictures and think he MUST still be real. I uploaded hundreds of pictures of him to flickr. That was like being cut up by razor blades and dunked in lemon juice. It was every happy reminder of everything i no longer have. Everything I'm missing, on a screen in front of me. I spent the weekend curled up in a ball on my bed. To say i was ill-equipped to handle the anniversary is an understatement. Is anyone ever well-equipped? And now the e-mails have started rolling in, reminding me that our wedding anniversary is two weeks away. I just can't win, it seems.

Day 360

with the anniversary so rapidly approaching (this Friday), I feel like I'm in a bit of a tail spin. Anything I could possibly do to turn time back, I would do.

Day 325

As the days creep closer to the 365 day mark i find it harder and harder to believe. how could nearly a year have passed? the other night i was playing videos of him and as soon as his voice played, bodhi ran up to lick the phone. it was so sweet and so sad i didn't know how to cope. last night i had a dream with robert. and also john lennon. i like to think that maybe robert and john lennon are hanging around on the other side, having deep discussions.

Day 307

Christmas was unfathomably painful. It started as soon as Thanksgiving hit and the Christmas music started playing in every store I stepped in. I hadn't thought that Christmas would be that difficult, because ten months had passed. That was wishful thinking. Beyond wishful, really. I also went off my medication a couple of weeks before the holidays, which was, in hindsight, a terrible idea. I ended up with all kinds of physical withdrawal symptoms and felt generally miserable. The misery eased a bit as soon as the holiday passed. New Year's Eve will be hard. It puts my husband's passing into the "last year" category, even though a year hasn't yet passed. I hate the idea of that. i know it's all semantics, but it feels shitty. I also am terribly broken up over the idea of starting a new year without him. I was going to spend the night at home (wallowing), but decided to go see my friends band play. At least this way I'm likely to start the year with some happiness, instead of the ever-present overwhelming feeling of grief and loss. Just before Thanksgiving I also lost my therapist, as she moved out of state. I can still do phone sessions with her, but I haven't as of yet. We'll see what the new year brings in terms of my ability to cope and go from there.

Day 274

Day 254

Have I mentioned how much I miss my husband? Oh, I have? Because there are moments when I feel like I'm adjusting to life without him, and then there are moments where his loss still seems unreal. I'm starting to face some of the legal obligations I have in regards to his passing and it's all stuff I'd rather not have to deal with. I have an MBA. I don't shy away from business in general, but business + family is tricky. I'm trying to do what my husband wanted, which he'd made clear before he passed. I'm lucky in that sense. I'd still rather he was here to help me through this. That's true of every little thing every single day, though.

Day 248

This sounds the way my grief feels right now.

Day 246

I'm incredibly lonely. I feel myself slipping further and further into a loneliness i don't know how to cure. Going out in public just makes it worse. Staying home doesn't help.

Day 196

Today I made plans for my husband's second memorial service. Some of his ashes are being buried with his parents in the family cemetery. It feels like  weight has been lifted to finally have this scheduled, although i felt, literally, like I was going to vomit when I had to make the phone calls. There's just nothing easy about this process, even 6 months down the road. Both his birthday and mine are also approaching, so that's something that is hanging over my head. I know exactly what he would get me if he were here. And what he would get himself too. That new iPhone they just announced? He'd be all over it. I'm not certain if he'd go for the 6 or the 6 plus, but he'd be getting one of them for sure. I wish I could hear his comments. I wish I could discuss a million things with him, actually...

Day 186

So it's officially September, which means it's birthday month. I can't get the idea out of my head that Robert won't be singing me his silly birthday song this year. I've been trying to find a copy of it recording as an audio message or short video and so far I've had no luck. It really is breaking my heart. It's such a silly little thing, but it was tradition. Our tradition. This year there will be no birthday adventure, not for my day or his. I know what I would be getting him if he were here, and I could guess what he would be getting me. None of that matters now. This year I'll be flying down to surprise my mother for her birthday, which is 2 days before mine. I hope the surprise is a good surprise. I also hope that the excitement of surprising her will overshadow the obvious anxiety that will come from returning to the place where my husband passed away, from laying in the last bed we slept in together (we took a wonderful nap mid-afternoon on the day he passed). What I wouldn't give to get the chance to nap with him today. As humid and awful as it is, I'd never let him go. This journey, it changes, but it doesn't get easier.

Day 184

Some of my husband's ashes will be buried in his family cemetery, with his parents and his sister. I've spent the last few days shopping for burial markers. It's a depressing task, and it's equally daunting because how do you make the decision to create a suitable marker for people to see, in theory, at least hundreds of years to come. Decades from now there will be some distant relative, generations away, who will only know my husband as a marker in the family cemetery. How do I make something so simple meaningful enough to be worthy of such a complex person? I think I've settled on trying to match his parents' headstone as best I can. That seems like a good way to do it, and it's self-limiting in terms of choices. The one thing that bothers me is that by burying him with his parents, instead of his own plot, I leave his baby sister out by herself, as if she wasn't a part of the unit. That seems wrong. I don't know how to correct that, though.