New Year's Everything

Today is New Year's Eve.  It has never been my favorite day of the year - too much pressure.  Too many expectations for an epic experience.  Too much letdown.  A few years ago, I got smart and quit putting all of that expectation out there and I've been happier for it.  Tonight I will see some wonderful friends and drink some delicious wine.  I will probably eat too many snacks and I will go to bed a little later than normal.  The whole time I will miss Matt.

Maybe the reason New Year's Eve is a bummer is because of the usual holiday high.  Or the holiday crash afterward.  The season is almost over and I have to say I'm feeling relieved which is not like me.  Enduring was harder than I thought it would be, but I'm not sure why.  I went into the season thinking it wouldn't be that difficult since every day is already a gauntlet anyway.  How could it be harder than that?  It was.  To explain is also difficult.

My friends and family were nothing short of amazing to us during this season.  The support and the rallying of Christmas cheer have gotten me through when I didn't think I could participate anymore.  Matt and I were overwhelmed with love and good wishes on and near our wedding day.  We talked about it - man, are we lucky.  Then when we had Daphne, we were overwhelmed and surprised all over again.  Those two experiences pale in comparison to the support Daphne and I feel from all around us - even from unexpected, dusty and far away places.  Thank you, universe, for the gift of friendship.  Make sure everyone has a little bit even if they don't have as much as I've been lucky to have.

Despite all of this, I never before have I felt so alone in a crowd.  Lost is more like it.  Like I'm missing a limb, or forgot something essential.  It's the uneasy, the anger, the sad, the future, the bone-weary that I'm having a hard time with now.  They say there are many stages of grief and that they are recursive instead of linear.  How about simultaneous?  The only one I haven't reached for even one second is acceptance.  I'm guessing that any book or therapist would probably tell me that one day I will reach it, but right now I can't see it.  Maybe I don't want to because I'm right in the middle of "anger" and "bargaining"  or all the stages at once.  So I'm stuck where I'm at - feeling everything and nothing and trying to keep it all together.  I had a thought once or twice near Christmas that it was difficult to be around so many people because crying isn't always so accepted.  How long is that phase going to last?  The bruised peach phase...  Anything can set me off and everything reminds me of him.  Every song, every place, every road, every color, every meal.   I want to talk about him all the time, but I can't bring myself to say anything about him at all.  Keeping that in is going to make me burst.

I am still sleeping at the foot of the bed.  I do not use our down comforter, but another blanket instead.  The light from our master bathroom stays on every night.  I have not touched one item from his side of our double-vanity sink.  His side of the closet is still full.  His referee shirt still hangs in our laundry room.  For over a month, I left the small pile of clothes and hats he left in the living room exactly where he left them.  After I picked them up, I spent a blurry half hour just standing in the living room trying to breathe through panicked tears.  Now they are with his other closet things and the living room no longer looks lived in by him.  I am incredulous that life and time can just move on without him.  And now a new year.

Because I am stuck, because it is another holiday that I have to endure without him, I have decided that my New Year's resolution is just to be okay.  Not great, but alright.  I resolve to be okay in 2014.

• I will try to be okay with the unknown, because that sometimes feels like all I have in my future. 
• I will try to be okay with my lack of control, but control the things I can like caring for Daphne.
• I will try to be okay with the passage of time even though the more time moves, the farther away from him I feel. 
• I will try to be okay with asking for help when I need it.  
• I will try to be okay with not being okay.
• I will try to be okay with missing him and knowing that there is no end point or relief from that feeling. 
• I will try to be okay with finding my own peace and not getting it from outside sources. 

Two Months

Two months.  Multiply that by six and I'll make it to a year.  Just one year... It may take a lifetime to make it through just this one.  I catch myself thinking that if I can make it a year with this this anxious, sad, rage rattling around in my body, I'll be free.  I'll level up in some way.  Maybe I won't have to focus on evening out my breath while I drive us home for the night.

For now, I'm just watching the world fly around me while I am safe inside a bubble of my own reality.  Am I camouflaged enough to participate in that world?  Am I acting normal?  I'm sure people see right through me, which makes me uncomfortable.  I'm not good at being vulnerable - at least not around most people.  I know there was probably a time when I was still trying to impress him, but I can't remember it.  I can't remember a time when feeling vulnerable around Matt made me squirm - he was  never a threat to my ego or my heart.  Just safe.

Daphne started to self-potty train last week.  Matt would have been so wonderful at talking with her about this.  While he would have found her hilarious as she squirmed on the toilet, he would have made her feel comfortable and relaxed.  I didn't even know she knew what it meant to really go on the potty.  Well, she does.  She asked to go.  And she did.  And Matt missed it.  He's going to miss everything.

I guess I could go on being nice to myself about it and tell myself that he can see her and that he's always with her, but I feel like it will start to hurt less if I just yell at myself.  He's gone!  He can't ever know that she is putting together three word sentences or asking to poop on the potty.  He won't know that she screamed, screamed, screamed when I took her to see Santa.  Or that she doesn't really like to put things in the trash can like she did before.  Or that she likes to check for packages at the front door.  I have to navigate her new toddler tantrums by myself and he won't get to see her in her Christmas dress.  I will decide where she will go to pre-school next year and what to do about this whole potty training thing.  He will never hear her say, "Daddy?  Love him.  Miss him" to his picture in the living room.

So instead, I make myself listen to ugly, pain-filled words inside my head like widow.  Single mom.  Late husband.  I now know what "words cutting like a knife" feels like.  I had to tell my new dentist last week.  He was a nice man, but he referenced my husband in a way I couldn't avoid.  I was traumatized for the rest of the afternoon by my having to tell him that he was gone.  Telling people is hard.  I think it's because most of the people I now tell are people who don't really know me.  So when they act sad or gentle with me, it sends me into a tailspin.  I'm not sure why kindness when I need it makes me cry, but I've been like that my whole life.  Right now anything makes me cry - especially the overeager dental assistant who acts horrified that my daughter is only 18 months old and  tells me that "crying heals the soul."  Saying ugly, horrifying words in my head won't help my situation, but maybe I'll stop being as shocked as the person sitting across from me when they come out of my mouth.

Today I am thankful for a routine.  Going to work helps me take an emotional break so I can focus on healing and peace and Daphne when I come home.  I am thankful for my coworkers who do incredibly thoughtful things for me and who act normal even when that is difficult, so that I can, too.

First Thanksgiving

Yesterday was the anniversary of the day Matt and I met.  We also called it our dating anniversary which we celebrated every year with Christmas decorating, pajamas, hot chocolate and cheesy Christmas music.  I asked some friends to be with me this year, so I wouldn't sit and cry all night. They came bearing the most wonderful ornament crafting materials in case I couldn't bear to hang our sentimental family ornaments.  There was a lot of glitter and paint and laughing - they are really wonderful friends.  I opened and shared the bottle of wine I bought the week I met Matt - we had been saving it for a special occasion which seems like a waste now.  It was a DaVinci Chianti that I purchased at a wine tasting with a friend.  I think he would have really liked it.

I am realizing that he is everywhere, and that I cannot escape the world he and I built around ourselves even if I want a break for one second.  Thanksgiving and this time of year are worse than I thought.  I've been thinking a lot about our usual holiday events and I realized that I can count on one hand the amount of Thanksgivings I was able to spend wih him.  How is that it? 

2007- I met Matt (through email) during the week of Thanksgiving. We exchanged a few emails over my break from school - emails I received on a laptop in my parents' living room, all the while concealing any reaction or commentary. He was my exciting secret. I remember him telling me in one of those emails that he spent one of his holiday break evenings watching football with a friend in Kentucky, but I really knew nothing about him at that point.  That's a strange idea - to go back to a time when I didn't know his Matt-ness.  We used to say that it felt like we had known each other our entire lives even though we had memories that were obviously of times before we met.  We would say we couldn't believe the number of years we had known each other was so small since it felt like we'd known each other forever.  Now those conversations are haunting me.

So he was at a bar or restaurant watching football while I was in a living room in Saint Peters, watching movies with my family. I didn't see him, but he told me he wore Mizzou gear from head to toe just to get a rise out of the locals. I remember the dress I wore to Thanksgiving dinner because it still hangs in my closet as something I'd love to fit into again one day.  After about a week and a few long phone calls, we met in person.

2008- Our second Thanksgiving almost didn't happen- not with family.  After his 3-week stay in the ICU for his flare-up of Hemilitic Anemia, ITP and an emergency splenectomy, he was released from the hospital the day before Thanksgiving. We made it to visit family in Saint Peters, but returned to home for the rest of the weekend so he could rest.  We decorated our duplex for Christmas on Saturday (our one-year anniversary), but took an overnight trip to the emergency room because he was having a gall bladder attack that felt like a heart attack. A month later on Christmas Day, he was admitted to the hospital again. Secondary infection from the splenectomy.  I gave him the board game of Mancala and a pair of black Chuck Taylor's.  

2009- The third thanksgiving was the first time we saw his family after our engagement on September 29th. It was fairly normal. We saw both sides if the family and ate way too much. I made his mom's recipe for Miracle Pie.

2010-  First major holiday as a married couple.  I wore orange. Matt wore a grey hat, purchased because he saw the style in New Orleans on our honeymoon.  It made his eyes sparkle - most hats did that for him.  Over the break he tried duck hunting with my family for the first time. He shot for fun once, but didn't hit a bird. He looked ridiculous in camo hip waders, four shirts and giant gloves with hand-warmers stuffed inside.

2011- This was the first big holiday after Matt's mom passed away.  He was sad that she had to miss the big family announcement we brought with us.  To each family gathering we went to, we handed out our Christmas card - a picture of two adult pairs of Chuck Taylor's and one tiny pair in the middle.  May 28th, 2012.  It was an exciting and exhausting couple of days.  I was 14 weeks pregnant and Matt could not contain his excitement.  This year, Matt's side of the family came to Columbia to celebrate.  I made a ridiculous and huge meal.  

2012- Daphne's first Thanksgiving. We had a bib that said, "Grandma's Little Gobbler."  She had some teeth, but she had not started eating solids yet.  We took a family picture - our only Thanksgiving picture - on the steps of my Grandma's house not knowing that by one year later she would have sold it and would be living in her new condo. 

2013- Our first Thanksgiving without him.  There are too many yet to come. There are not enough years in the list above.