Category: grief

Three weeks, around 11:30am.

The mornings are still the worst. I had to force myself to get up and take a shower this morning. I just don’t care…I don’t want to go about these “normal” activities when everything is still anything but normal. I don’t want to go to work and have to pretend to be “fine” all day long – at least when I’m dealing with customers. I don’t want to do anything without Matt.

I guess I can tell that I am gradually getting more used to doing things without Matt. I shouldn’t say “used to” because that’s not really accurate. “Resigned to” is better. But that’s not even accurate either because sometimes I can’t even deal with being resigned to never see Matt again. It’s so unbelievably depressing. All I can do – pretty much literally – is just to keep putting one foot in front of the other and hope that it’s enough. I want to be happy again, and I know Matt certainly wanted that for me too. It’s going to take me a long time to get there, I can tell. I can’t do anything about it though – except keep trudging along. Missing Matt every step of the way with every fiber in my being.

I keep trying to find comfort somewhere – anywhere. All I want is for Matt to be here, comforting me, rubbing my back, helping me clean the house, going to the Brewhouse — doing whatever he wants. This is the least comforting thought though, since I’m never, ever going to be able to do any of these things with him again. Three weeks later and this isn’t any better or easier yet. I might be making progress, and I think I probably am, but it’s excrutiatingly slow and painful.

In the meantime I have to keep going to work. I have to keep paying all of my bills, and feeding the cats. I have to figure out how to cancel Matt’s cell phone plan and his bank account, and his car insurance. Maybe I should have done that stuff already – I don’t know. I don’t want to say that I hate my life right now because that just sounds melodramatic to me, but I am really not fond of it. I’m glad for all of my friends, but the love from everyone combined doesn’t even begin to make up for the love that is gone. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful because I am VERY grateful. But it’s just true.

EDIT: I used the chat feature and was able to cancel Matt’s cell phone plan. The guy waived the early cancellation fee and told me he would pray for me and all that. I know he’s supposed to act that way, but it ended up being much simpler than I had been anticipating. Now to the car insurance and bank accounts.

I’ve been at work less than an hour so far.  I was hoping that today would be easier than yesterday – and it still could be.  But being here reminds me of how lonely I am.  Before, I would text Matt throughout the day and he would text back when he could, but it was so nice to be able to send him my thoughts and feelings and whatever else and know that he appreciated hearing from me.  Now I feel that irrelevant texting would just annoy whomever I decided to text.  Blogging helps I guess, but it’s so much less personal – I’m just throwing everything out there and I know some people are reading it…but there is no dialogue involved. 

 

But mostly I just fucking miss Matt.  The love of my life.  Overall I mentally and emotionally accept that he is dead and he is never, ever coming back to me.  But every now and then, it still blows my mind (an enormously tactless pun, I know, but I feel like Matt would laugh so I’m leaving it in).  I can’t believe my wonderful husband would just abandon me.  I’m still not sure what to do with that information – how to compute and process. 

 

 

But…on the other hand…I can and do believe it.  And I’m glad that Matt isn’t suffering anymore.  I just wish there could have been another way to stop the pain.

To end the day’s blogging on a somewhat less depressing note, I’ll add that after work (which was depressing as hell despite everyone being glad to see me back and being very nice to me) I met Amy for dinner.  Even though there really isn’t anything you can say that’s going to make me feel better (seriously, I’ve already thought of most of the positive things in this situation and they aren’t really helping my mood yet), it does feel good when people express their love for me in outward manifestations.  Such as wanting to have dinner with me.  The hard part is making myself actually GO to dinner, in this example (this has always been a struggle).  It’s easier for me to lye around feeling sorry for myself, but THAT doesn’t make me feel better – at least not yet.

I’m alone at home right now.  I’ll probably be sleeping here by myself tonight too.  It will be the first time since Matt died, but it’s something that I’ve had to do many nights over this last year.  I don’t know if all of that helped emotionally prepare me for any of this, but I can tell that it at least helped prepare me mentally.  But yeah, that’s certainly no consolation right now.  Just an observation I guess.

And I’ll close with this picture of Matt’s amazing hair.

At “home” which is just a lonely, empty house (except for the cats). I have loved this house so much, but everything is so completely wrong without Matt. I had to sit here for 5 minutes saying over and over, “He’s never coming back” pretty much immediately after walking in the door. When they say you have to take this an hour at a time, they’re not kidding. I go from sobbing to feeling like cleaning up to zoning out in front of the TV to wanting to draw back to sobbing. It’s very unstable and I hate it. But … it is what it is. I can’t do anything else about it.

Right now I’m lying on the couch with the TV and cats making background noise. Bitey wants to go outside. I should be taking a nap instead of writing this since we left at 9 last night and drove all night.

And this is what is directly in front of me. I almost want to take them down. Did you guys like these btw?

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This time two weeks ago, Matt had gotten home from going to lend his friend some DVDs and we were in bed watching Hamlet. Everything was so normal.

Most of today had been ok. By “ok,” I mean that I’ve felt slightly hopeful about my future but I’ve also been distracted by the beach and reading and crocheting and people.

Right now though, the hope has faded into faith that I’ll be ok. I miss Matt so much. I never wanted to be with anyone else – Matt was the only one. Still is for that matter, which is so much in conflict with my yearning for the love which so abruptly disappeared from my life and my knowledge that Matt’s ashes are sitting in my kitchen. Matt will never love me again. I will have to find someone else – which I can’t bear thinking about but is also constantly on my mind.

I keep telling myself that I have to learn to take care of myself and love myself more – which is definitely what matt wanted me to do. Still, that can’t make up for the emptiness I feel going to bed or getting up in the morning. Or any other time that my attention is not diverted. I have always enjoyed my own company and being alone, but I think a big part of that was simply that I didn’t realize how amazing it is to be in love. When that love is snatched out from under your feet, to say that it’s destabilizing is just trite. For that matter, most of the things you can say about it are trite. Sitting out here crying is not enough either. Nothing I know how to do is enough.

Standing at the beach. Thinking that time heals all wounds, unless they’re too big and you die. I guess the latter happened to Matt. I don’t think I’m going to die though, which makes my chances of healing from all of this pretty good. I have to keep reminding myself of this.

I’m so scared that I’ll never find anyone who makes me as happy as Matt did.

Matt’s been dead over a week now. It seems like the time has been passing sooooo slowly, but on the other hand it feels like forever since things were normal. Over a week since our last dinner together, our last shower together, our last game of cribbage. I wish I had been able to do more for him. I know I did SO MUCH but I can’t keep at bay the voices telling me that I should have done more.

It’s so hard when the ONLY thing you want is the only thing you can never have. I am just finding it almost impossible to care about anything else – how I look, eating, cleaning, doing anything at all. I know other people have other stuff going on in their lives now and I think maybe I should ask them about things, but I just can’t summon the strength and will to care. I’m sure this won’t last forever. Just like I knew my life with Matt wouldn’t last forever. I always wanted to be the first one to die, but I honestly don’t know that Matt would have made it without me. We had so much love. I still do.

I hate not being able to do anything to fix this or make it better. It’s like all I can do is sit here and soak it all in, and it’s not fun.

I’ve been drawing pictures of Matt. I don’t know if it’s beneficial or just making me more inclined to start crying, but I guess I’m “enjoying” it because I keep doing it. I miss his face so much. Oh my god.

I just want the days to pass quickly so that maybe a better time will come, but the time is going so slowly. I always wanted time to slow down when Matt and I were together because I never got tired of being around him, but it flew by then. I guess I’ll look back on the happy memories fondly at some point, but now they just make my whole body ache. I’m trying not to feel hopeless but some hours are harder than others.

I miss my other half like I had some limbs amputated. It’s so, so wrong and it hurts.

Over at Matt’s aunt’s house with family. It’s nice to have all of these people around and I’m trying to let myself soak in the love from everyone. It’s…good, but hard because everything is hard. Today has actually been slightly better than yesterday but I’m still very much an emotional roller coaster. I miss my husband so so badly.

I am continuing to fight guilt. I KNOW that I did all I could. I know that Matt knew that I love him, whether he was mentally able to accept that or not. One of our most recent conversations about his depression was a few weeks ago and I told him that it was okay for him to let himself be loved by me – because he knew that I love him. He started crying. I am so sorry that I couldn’t do anything else. Even though it was the disease and nothing that I could control anyway.

I can’t help but think that if I hadn’t dragged my feet so much when he wanted to focus on exercise. I had no idea how important it was to him then. I wish I had made him exercise once I realized what it meant. There are so many things that I think I should have done differently now. I wish I had woken up earlier on Thursday and made him lunch – maybe I would have seen the gun. Or if I had remembered to stick in that love note I had written for valentines day but left at work. Or if I had gone with him to meet his friend on Wednesday night – the night he “borrowed” the gun – then wouldn’t he still be alive now?

I feel like I could have done more to help prevent this. But the truth is, even if I had been able to help him manage his symptoms (and I know that I did help), I couldn’t cure his disease. Oh how I wish he had been able to keep hanging on, but I am also so glad that he isn’t suffering and in pain anymore. I can’t fathom the pain that he was living with every day. Some days were better I know, but………

Regardless of all of this, my beloved Matt is dead now and will never be coming back to me. And I am trying to accept that fact. I want to DO something to fix all of this. I would do ANYTHING to have Matt back …but that is just not an option. I go from feeling grateful for having family around to just feeling so completely alone and destitute and broken. So completely alone, and destitute, and broken.

But I can’t deny reality.