Ruins

My feelings are so securely locked deep in my chest cavity that I have to work very hard just to bring them to the surface so I can deal with them.

Today marks day three of staying home recovering from my cold, which is also day three of staying home alone with my thoughts. The brain has an amazing way of shielding a person from too much pain. My brain is not allowing me to fully experience my grief. Even after a full year, my brain knows how much I can and cannot handle. I still cannot handle Chris’ absense from my life and I fear that I will never be able to handle the crushing impact of that reality.

I keep myself busy, I run around visiting people, shopping, singing, creating noise in my life to overpower the noise of what I really need to deal with. I don’t want to deal with my loss. What I want is an impossibility. What I want is for this whole event to have never happened and no matter how many times I scream those words out loud, I cannot ever have what I want.

I keep the television on at all times to distract my brain from thinking. I am a broken person. I don’t function the way that I used to. I feel like I will never be as happy about anything as I was able to be before Chris got cancer. I’m a fraction of the person I used to be and I don’t know if that will ever change. Sometimes I just want to give up trying.

Sometimes I think about Chris or feel his presense and make the mistake of bellieving that because I feel his presence, that things can go back to being what they were. The realization that things will never be what they once were flattens me every time, squeezing the wind out of me.

Someitmes when I talk about him and laugh about things he said or did, I feel like he’s just away somewhere and like he’ll be coming back any day. Once again, reality knocks me off my feet. My brain has a way with tricking me into believing that he’s coming back.

I feel like my whole life has been ruined. At times I feel like I can’t do this anymore and since I’m not suicidal, I’m just trapped here in between, just waiting to die of natural causes fifty years from now. I could be here for another fifty years.

After fiance # 1, it was very easy for me to remember that there was life before him and that there would be life after him. It’s not so easy to think that way with regard to Chris. I’m not mad at Chris. He wasn’t mean to me. He wasn’t anything buy wonderful to me, but I feel as though I need to be able to say that about him if I’m ever going to be able to move foward. My brain will not allow me to think that way, though.

My life is ruined. I had finally arrived in a place where I really wanted to stay. Life next to Chris was pretty effortless. We just worked together, very easily. Home was peaceful. I learned how to handle his every mood and he learned how to handle mine. We leaned on each other for support and we never let each other down.

I hate my life without Chris in it.