Tuesday, December 27, 2016

It's a different world but everything looks the same...

I did it. I made it through my first Christmas without you, S. I can sum it up in two words...it sucked. Want more? How about three words? It fucking sucked. I haven't posted here in a while...a long while. I thought I was doing okay. I thought I was really getting through this. Then the nine month marker hit right around American Thanksgiving. Hoo boy did nine months hit me hard. I have no clue why. Six months was pretty hard but nine months was unbearable. I don't know what made that one so bad but it was torturous.

I didn't quite recover from that one because then all the Christmas stuff started. My widow brain returned full force and I have been walking around like a zombie all month. I actually got the energy to put up all of our decorations and it was a lot. We really decorated, didn't we S? I was up until four in the morning but I was so glad I did it. It was good to have that familiar Christmas grotto (TM my wonderful husband) that our apartment turned into every year.

Then Christmas week hit. Boy, I have never felt exhaustion like this. Everything exhausted me and annoyed me. It didn't feel like Christmas, it felt dirty, like everything was taunting me. My mom came up and spent the time with me and she was a trooper at dealing with my moods. I was glad to have the bonding time with her, even if I wasn't at my best but the actual holiday part of it was for the birds. I didn't like it. I'm so glad it's over.

I don't know how New Year is going to be. I dread it but also look forward to it. I don't want to be in the year my husband died anymore. I want to be in a new year to go along with this new life I'm building for myself. I want to leave my husband's death behind because I know that I'm taking him with me. He and I have a new relationship now and he will travel with me into 2017 as I continue to find out who I am becoming. I know S will be there for that. I don't think he wants to stay behind in the year of his death either.

There is that feeling of the more time goes on, the further I get away from him when he was alive. I do carry that. It is a burdensome feeling and I put it next to all the guilt that's still there. Those are things I will have to still work on but I won't let them stop me from moving forward. There is room for them and joy and heartache and hope. There is room for all of it. I can't make myself wait for the bad feelings to be worked on before I let myself feel the good feelings. I want to feel them all. That is who I am now. Somebody who has made friends with both sadness and joy and all the emotions that swirl around both of them.

I wouldn't be able to do that without love. S and I had that in spades, we still do. Love is the reason I feel so many conflicting feelings all the time. I am blessed to have had the love that I did. I am blessed to be the person I am now because of my husband. I fucking hated Christmas this year, it hurt, it sucked and it felt like a heavy cloud over me but the lining to all of that is love and I'm still filled with all of it, like an earth sized blanket of warmth...and pain but the pain is a reflection of that love. What more could I ask for besides the impossible notion of having my husband back?

Our eleventh wedding anniversary is next month and then the first anniversary of his death is the month after that. There is a lot of pain ahead of me but there is also so much more. Just like Christmas, it is going to hurt and it is going to suck but that is part of life. I know how short life is now and I can't wait to move forward and find this new life I see ahead of me. Thank you, S. Thank you for everything you did to make me who I am now. You did a lot and I am so grateful for the time I had with you. I would have loved more, you sonofabitch, but I'll take what I can get. I cherish every moment we had together.

If this blog seems conflicted and all over the place, welcome to my head. That is grief. That is moving forward as a widow. That is life and death. It's all so weird and mind bending. Happy New Year.