Author: erinreeve

Crossword puzzles and Cade’s Cove

It’s Monday morning. I’m back at work and figured I’d tell you guys about my weekend. It was a pretty good one, actually. I got up on Saturday morning and drove through Knoxville to Townsend and made my way to Cade’s Cove. I’d never been to the mountains by myself, and it was great. It rained the whole drive from Nashville to Knoxville, but stopped around Watt Road and stayed dry until I was driving through Townsend to get back to Knoxville.

The drive through the mountains was soothing somehow. It didn’t magically make me feel fine or not sad or anything, but it was so nice to be in the mountains surrounded by trees and moss and rhododendron and water and rocks.

blog - cades cove

(I took the picture below just because I thought it was funny that so many people had pulled over to pet the horses. Like they’ve never seen horses before or something. ??)
blog - horses at cades cove

blog - panorama

After I got back into Knoxville I decided to stop by the UT trial gardens. It WAS raining at this point, and I got pretty wet even though I was wearing a raincoat. But it was just gorgeous and I’m really glad I stopped.

blog - trial gardens

blog - rose

blog - water lilies

Sunday I went to church with Mom and Dad, and I’m glad I did that too. It’s funny – I forget how much Grace feels like home. It makes sense that it does – I spent more time there than I did anywhere except our house when I lived in Knoxville.

Grandma’s birthday party was a good time too. 🙂 All the siblings were there (Dad’s I mean) including Aunt Luci who I probably hadn’t seen in 10 years or so. I felt comfortable and like I belonged, and it was really nice.

So now I’m back in Nashville, getting on with the day-to-day again. I wish Matt was here. I wished he was with me all weekend long – and I’m not even going to try to explain what an enormous understatement that is. But it is what it is, and time is a healing power, and I’m going to be patient even though I feel like I’m treading water a lot of the time. I know I’ll be OK. But how I wish that I didn’t have anything to recover from….

Nineteen weeks in and I am still having to learn over and over again that being single is my new normal. I cannot be in another romantic relationship any time soon because I am still deeply, deeply missing MATT. It’s not just that I miss physical contact, having a companion, sex on demand, etc. It’s that I miss MATT. I still can’t believe that he’s never coming back – even though obviously I do believe it, have believed it, and realize that it couldn’t be any other way. It still shocks me anew though. I’m going to Knoxville this weekend and the only thing I want is for Matt to be alive to go with me.

But I MUST get used to being single. Matt had a disease and was in so much excruciating pain that he couldn’t deal with it anymore. It wasn’t my fault, and it wasn’t his fault. That doesn’t help me miss him any less, but it helps me be less angry and resentful. Matt loved me more than he had ever loved anyone else, and it was the same for me. It was so fucking special, and I was so fucking happy.

But I HAVE to be OK with being single. I have no other option. It’s not healthy for me to go around thinking about how much I wish I had someone to bring home with me and wake up next to me (unless it’s in mourning for Matt). I need to be content with what I have, and hope for more in the future, but re-learn how to be happy with what I have. I will always miss Matt, I know, but I do NOT need to be thinking about trying to fill his absence with anyone else right now.

It’s so hard. I feel like the ground has crumbled underneath me, and that it’s still crumbling. I need Matt to stabilize me (ironically). I need somebody to love me. I need Matt. I need Matt.

nineteen weeks and one day….

I missed blogging yesterday, but justified it by telling myself that I blogged Wednesday and that I would today as well. Yesterday was a pretty full day for me, considering. Stephen came over and watched 1776 with me, for which I was SO grateful. After he left, I devoted the next hour or so to cleaning out the garage which I had been putting off for several months. It looks WORLDS better now, and I feel very gratified. After getting the garage and house cleaned up, some old B&C coworkers came over and we grilled burgers, had jello shots, and sat around and talked/watched It’s Always Sunny (very patriotic…). Overall, it was as good of a July 4th as I had hoped for, so that was nice.

I will add that I was surprised at how much I missed Matt just because it was a holiday. It’s not like we ever celebrated the 4th of July other than watching 1776 (and sometimes Team America), but I guess the fact that it was a holiday just made Matt’s absence more noticeable to me. The books I’ve read all say that holidays are bad. I wasn’t expecting this one to be anything important though.

Oh well. I think I’m going to try to hibernate from October through March this winter, though.

Anyway, I’m going to Knoxville this weekend – Grandma’s turning 90 on Sunday. (On an unrelated note, Sarah is turning 6 on Monday.) I’m debating driving in early because I’ve just been feeling lost lately, and for some reason, spending time in an unfamiliar place seems like it might help. If I drive in tonight, I’ll probably go to the mountains tomorrow. If I drive in tomorrow morning, I don’t know what I would do with the rest of the day. I don’t have any friends in Knoxville really, except for family. Of course I never really did have all THAT many friends in Knoxville, which is maybe one reason it was so easy for me to move to Nashville. I don’t know, and it’s not important.

This week, I’ve felt like my footing has been unstable. Like I can’t see past the next turn in the road. I don’t know where I’m going anymore, and I don’t remember how to do all this alone very well. I know all the “right answers” to tell myself, but they only marginally help. Maybe I should stop trying so hard.

ALSO, I’ve decided that my blog is in no way meant to showcase fancy ideas and words, and that I don’t have to feel bad when I just spew mental gibberish here.

scattered…

My thoughts have been very scattered these last few days. They’re going all over the place and I either haven’t been doing a good job of keeping them controlled, or I haven’t been trying.

Sometimes I get the urge to just start all over somewhere. I was driving to work this morning and remembered the time that Mom and Dad brought me to visit Lipscomb, and we stayed in Cathy Pool’s mom’s apartment (right?) which was off of Charlotte, near the pink elephant. I drive there every day now, and it almost feels like home. It used to feel more like home than it does now, though; Matt was my home. Wherever he was, I was home. We could have moved anywhere, and as long as he was there I would have been happy.

I still feel so disoriented and lost sometimes. Thank God I have people here tying me to Nashville – people who love me and enjoy my company (at least some of the time anyway). It’s so easy to focus on what I have lost rather than what I still have, though; what I lost feels so immense and overpowering though – when I dwell on it anyway.

It’s been over 4 months but it feels like FOREVER since February 20th, even though I still remember that evening well. Maybe I feel like – since 4 months seems like a year ago – I should be stabilizing. And I know I am. But there’s still so much instability, questioning, doubting, loneliness, insecurity, etc. I just want to fix it all. I wish I could take a test to rate how well I’m doing in recovering from all this. It’s not an easy thing for me to gauge. People tell me that they’re glad to see that I’m doing so well…but I don’t know what “doing well” means. I guess that “doing poorly” would mean staying in bed, never cleaning or being proactive, not seeing friends, etc. I’m keeping my house clean, I’m doing fine at work, I’m asking people to hang out with me. So I guess if that means that I’m doing fine, then I’m doing fine.

I just get overwhelmed still. I wonder if anyone will ever love me like Matt did. I’m getting used to living by myself but it’s still so unnatural and I feel Matt’s absence every day.

This is a long process, I know. I need to have realistic expectations for myself. And I need to be thankful for the people who have offered to help me along the way. I need to be patient. Four months is not all that long in the scheme of things, and it’s okay for me to still be struggling; in fact, if I wasn’t, it would probably mean that I was doing something wrong.

Oh, life.

I can’t believe how cruel it was for matt to kill himself after telling me repeatedly that he saw me as an extension of himself. How did he think this would affect me?? But then I remember that he did say it broke his heart to think of how it would hurt me. And I think that I must still have absolutely no inkling of the pain that he was in every day.

I miss him so, so, so much. Its a lovely Sunday morning and I’ve been lying in bed wishing matt was here. I had an image of him coming through the door, jumping on top of me, and how I would kiss him and try to touch every inch of his body with every inch of my body. I can’t believe heleft me to this. I can’t believe he was in such pain.

addendum

I finally sat down and deleted Matt’s income out of my budget (and also deleted the scooter payments and Vandy payments, which was nice). Much to my surprise, I find that I am perfectly capable of living within my means – I just can’t go around re-decorating my house all the time, and I should stop buying completely unnecessary stuff.

Along those lines, I found out today that a company-wide 2% raise goes into effect today.

So many good things mixed in with the bad, and I’m glad I can appreciate both sides of the coin.

18 weeks, and a list of things on my mind

– This year is half-way over
– I’ve been single for over 4 months now
– One of my coworkers brought me flowers from her garden (gladiolas, black-eyed-susans) and they are so pretty
– I need to remember to bring home that meat in the fridge from yesterday…
– There will be no one waiting for me at home again today
– Matt will not be waiting for me at home today, or ever again
– I feel like a broken record a lot of the time lately
– I’m struggling with the Taoist idea that desires cause pain, and no desires bring peace
– I miss being loved by my late husband
– I’d like to bake some bread after work today (stocked up on sandwich fixings yesterday except bread)
– It’s hard for me to remember how much I enjoyed being single and independent before I met Matt, because I don’t enjoy it right now. Am I doing something wrong?
– Matt
– The struggle some days to do anything productive…sometimes I’m able to force myself to get up and do stuff (e.g. grocery shopping, cleaning the bathroom, sweeping the floor, washing dishes, cleaning litter boxes, contacting friends, mowing the lawn, going to a coffee shop – ANYTHING). Sometimes I am not successful in forcing myself to do stuff though. This is nothing new really – I had the same problem when Matt was around. But it seems worse now. I don’t have anyone sitting on the couch distracting me and justifying my laziness. And that makes it all the harder to do anything.
– July 4th is coming up. I used to spend my holidays being blissfully lazy with Matt, but being lazy alone is not blissful. Does anyone want to come over and lie in bed with me while we watch 1776? Sorry, the only VCR is in the bedroom. Maybe I can plan a cook-out. I hate that Matt won’t be there.
– Contentment
– This weekend – I have nothing planned and I probably should
– Work, which I ought to get back to

Titles are my strong suit.

Yesterday was a bad day.

But today has been better so far. Work has been pretty busy because several people are out, and I much prefer the work day to go by quickly. I went to Whole Foods on my lunch break because I hate driving in Green Hills and just wanted to get it out of the way. I got some chicken breast and ground beef which I’m going to take home, package in individual portions, and stick in the freezer. I’m doing some more grocery shopping after work today but just try to buy local/ethical meat.

But I haven’t been eating well lately and I’m getting really tired of never having any food in the house. Last night, I had pretzels and hummus for dinner, and then some clementines and chocolate. Because that was basically all I had. I’m going to at least get some sandwich stuff and frozen veggies just for more options. I’ll probably also get some yeast and bake some bread in the next day or so. I skipped breakfast this morning (slept in a little too late) but ate lunch instead, and feel markedly better post-sandwich.

Anyway. Just an update.

Sometimes

I’m struck with the thought – how on earth am I doing this?? Which is to say… I have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that you can love someone so much, but that will never stop them from being irrevocably gone after they die. Gone. Forever. It’s so, so heartbreaking. If you don’t see me crying, it’s not because I don’t.

This is why people believe in an afterlife. I completely understand.

Edit: I have a tendency to post stuff sometimes and then come back 30 minutes later realizing that I have more to say. Oops. But the more that I have to say right now is this – while Matt being gone continues to break my heart like every day, I’m so thankful for the capacity to feel grateful when other people are kind to me. Sometimes it just amazes me. I had planned to nap during my lunch break but ended up thinking about Matt instead, and when I got back to work Leslie handed me half of her pizza because she couldn’t finish it. Stephen volunteered to stop and grab Chinese for dinner yesterday so that we wouldn’t have to rush to get to the movie. Just little things that probably mean nothing to whoever is doing it can make me feel appreciated, and it’s nice. I feel silly thanking people sometimes for things that they obviously don’t think warrant such thanks. If I explained every time that whenever anyone does anything for me that indicates they were thinking about me, it means SO much. It means that I’m not alone, and that I still have love in my life.

I’m feeling a little disenchanted of life right now. The fact that I am privileged enough to complain about this should probably keep me from complaining. But it doesn’t, and now I feel ungrateful too. Is it too early in the morning to be guilt-tripping myself?

I miss feeling like I belong with other people. I don’t have any claim on anyone, except my family I suppose. Maybe the Ralston’s, sort of, a little bit.

This weekend was fairly full. I spent some time with Stephen on Saturday, then Ryan came over yesterday; both days I worked on my feather quilt which has been on the back burner for about a year now. I have an empty week ahead of me, not including work of course, and that’s daunting. I don’t want to spend the week alone, but I get tired of asking people to hang out with me. You know, I get tired of a lot of this shit. I just want someone to hold me while I cry and cry, maybe rub my back or comb my hair or something.

No more – starting to cry at work. THAT’s never a good thing.

If anyone in Nashville reads this and wants to hang out with me this week, let me know. Otherwise I might just end up asking you….