New Year. New Everything.

Jan 1, 2013. Fabulous hats. Bright new year.

2013 is just about to slip away, and I barely noticed the past two months.

That's not a bad thing, I don't think there has been much to notice. I've hibernated, I've put off doing things that I know I should have begun, I've spent vast amounts of that time watching TV, or sitting in front of the computer with a half dozen tabs open, checking pages every few minutes to see if there have  been changes. Has anything happened here? Refresh. No? On to the next tab then. Why isn't anyone online? Do these people have lives or something? Geez!

I have done exactly what I was talking about in one of the previous posts. I've time traveled my way through November and December. It's okay. I needed to. I might still do that for a while. There are still things to binge-watch on Netflix.

Sometime sent me a note last week to say they hope I'm getting through this, and I realized that for the first time I'm beginning to believe I will. It wasn't that I never believed I could until last week, it was that I didn't care, I really didn't. Oh, I've tried to talk a good game about all of the plans I have, about following Jeff's advice, being in the moment, not allowing my mind chatter to get the better of me... but really? For the entirety of November and for a large chunk of December, probably right up through Thursday or Friday, I really didn't care. For the first few weeks every time I woke up I was disappointed that I had woken up because there was nothing, not one single thing, that I could find to look forward to.

Now, well, maybe the world isn't quite as dark as it was.  This is not to say that I have suddenly emerged on the other side of the tunnel and am filled with fresh new hope for the future, I'm still far from that. I'm still having the awful mood swings, the sobbing fits, the experience of walking into a room and feeling astonished that he's not there. But the other day there were a few little passing moments where I realized that I do care about the future, just a little. There are things I look forward to. Things I want to see, do, and experience. Places I want to go. People I want to meet. Friends to visit. It may not seem like realizing this was a big step, but for me this felt like a huge revelation.

So here I am, getting ready to begin a new year on my own. I don't usually make a list of resolutions, but there are things I'll try to do this year. I know I'll slip backwards more often than not, I'll fall in and out of bad habits. I'll battle with my anxiety about the future every day. I'll cry, complain, whine, and feel miserable because I miss Jeff so much it makes my stomach hurt. But I will also find joy and fun in little things. I'll try to reach out more to people, something I've always been extremely afraid of doing because I'm convinced I'm being a bother. I'll chatter constantly about whatever pops into my head and share whatever pastime I become obsessed with until I drive all of my online friends completely insane and they begin to wish my internet would fail. I'll set goals that are so far beyond my reach that they're just silly but I'll cherish them anyway, and I'll realize that others are more attainable than I'd imagined. I hope I'll surprise myself.

I have no idea what's going to happen in 2014 and I'm terrified, but maybe, just maybe, there will be a little more light in my life.

(cross posted from Kything NaturesZen)

Christmas morning

I've really managed to avoid Christmas for the most part. I've stayed in the house, I don't decorate, I don't have friends inviting me over or a large extended family that is celebrating all month. That's made it a lot easier, it means there aren't all of these events that I went to with Jeff that I have to deal with solo this year. It's the same old sitting in the house alone sort of week that I had for all of November and December. But even so it's not as if I can ignore the holiday entirely and pretend it's just Wednesday.

If it hadn't happened he'd have woken me up this morning with a kiss, just because it was Christmas and he'd have thought I'd like it. We'd not have done anything special but whatever it was, we'd have done it together. I lit a candle beside his pic, I wished him a merry Christmas. I would give anything in the whole world to be held in his arms.

I appreciate all of the Christmas wishes I get from people, I know they love me. I appreciate the hugs, but I never want to let go. I just want to cling to people until I feel like I'm going to start to cry, but I don't want to make their holiday sad so I collect myself and let go and try to smile.

And I wish that I could experience one of those heartwarming Christmas miracles like you see in the movies. Sometimes I wonder if they are already happening all around me and I am just not ready to see them yet.

I love you Jeff. Merry Christmas to you.

Messages

This is one of those stories that people would be sure is fiction, and although the first half of it was cool enough that I thought I'd share on Facebook, the latter half left me just a little freaked out and certain if I posted that part people would just shake their head and say "Yeah, you made that part up." But no, it's real. It's one of those really rare wild coincidence stories that happen now and then. Or maybe it's something more... either way, I thought I'd put it down here because I wanted to write it out, exactly as it unfolded.

So here I sat tonight, watching YouTube videos on the TV. I was alternately looking at the computer and the TV, getting ready to respond to a note on Facebook, and occasionally chattering about the video to Jeff's picture. In other words, fairly average night for the past few days. Then something colorful on the floor caught my eye and I looked over to see what that was.

In the middle of the floor, near the front door, was a little pink paper heart. I sort of remembered cutting it out from one of the small size pink post it notes, probably back around Valentine's Day. I'm not even sure what I did with it after that, I think I had made a few, this might have been stuck to Jeff's laptop, or stuck to my desk, or stuck to something. But wherever it had been I hadn't seen it in months, and since it was a bit of a throwaway idea I'd forgot all about it.

Now here it is, a little pink heart unfolded and quite pristine, and laying on the carpet. Obviously I picked up something that it was attached to and it fell off and fluttered into place where I noticed it. I've moved stuff around all day, I don't know what this was stuck to, but I suspect it had hitched a ride. I thought it was really cool, though, a neat little thing to find, a memory, and sort of like a little kiss from Jeff. I stuck the heart to the monitor and smiled at it, wrote a little Facebook post, and was happy.

Fast forward fifteen minutes or so. I was telling a few other people my cute heart story and getting ready to put the paper heart into a frame with Jeff's photo. I opened the lap drawer on my desk to get something that I could use to slide the heart under the glass and the first thing I see, right in the front of the drawer, is a folded up pink sticky note, with a heart shape cut out of it.

Now this drawer is a mess. I've cleaned it out a bit lately, but it's still a mess, full of old paper, junk, empty pens, more junk, and pretty much anything I wanted to scrape off the top of my desk. I move things around in it constantly, earlier I had shuffled it to and fro looking for USB cords. I don't recall seeing the pink note then, although I could have tossed it all over the place and not paid attention.

Now, just after I find the heart, here is a paper with a heart outline. Okay. Coincidence, right? I held it up and it is indeed the exact paper that the heart came from. Logically this is still just one of those rare events where it's totally explainable as random chance, but still astonishing when it happens.

But there is that part of me that feels like it is a little nudge from Jeff, a message to me. He's with me. He really is.

Infinite Time

I thought we'd have more time. More time for vacations. More time for photos. More time to live our lives to the fullest and make our dreams come true.

treasured time

I feel like my life was interrupted and just isn't back on track yet. I look at my phone and expect to see a text from him. I wonder, briefly, if he's left work. He always called when he was on his way home, to give me a ETA in case I needed to start dinner, and just to talk about the day. I miss him calling in the middle of the afternoon because he'd had a sudden idea about some project we could start and he was so excited he had to tell me right away. I continue to expect to find him somewhere in the house, standing in the kitchen or sitting on the couch watching TV. I have a hard time moving things around because in the back of my head there's a voice saying "No, he might still need to use this." I miss his physical presence in my life.

 I miss being wrapped up in his hugs.

 I'm thinking about him constantly. I find the happy few minutes every day, but I'm hit with chest crushing, screaming, pounding my fists on the floor grief at unpredictable moments. I look at photos that span the past few years, from our first date to just a few days before he died, and in all of them he is so alive, so present, so full of hope and dreams and goals for the future. It feels impossible that he isn't here to carry out his plans. I cry when I think of the things he was planning to learn, because he will not have that chance now.

I miss hearing him talk about all of his ideas for the future. I miss laying in bed and talking about what we hoped we'd do in the coming years. I miss that so much that I'm constantly fighting off the feeling that if he isn't here to help visualize our hopes and dreams and goals then there's no point in dreaming big, it's easier to just give up and accept a mundane life and never try anything new again.

A friend had mentioned things he'd hoped we could all still do together, and commented that this reminds us that our time here is brief. I agree. I'd always believed there would be time, endless amounts of it, to be together, to enjoy each other's company. Time felt infinite in relation to all of our goals. There would always be time to plan for things, time to learn new skills, time to work on hobbies, time to pursue our dreams and make them come true. And of course if there is always time to do something tomorrow then there's no need to worry about it today. A belief in infinite time fed our procrastination, even though we vowed to make changes they would always be for another day. Today would be spent watching a movie or two, or surfing for another hour, or doing nothing in particular until it's time to fall asleep.

Jeff called this time traveling. Rise in the morning, do your work, eat, watch TV, go to sleep. Repeat the same routine every day without varying it, never trying to break free of that pattern, and never feeling as though you've accomplished anything. We each spent a lot of time doing this, moving through the day without making any attempt to work on our plans. This was what we wanted to break free of. We wanted to stop traveling through time and start living in it.

The desire to wait until tomorrow to start something is very strong in me, and this will be a hard lesson to work on. Between the two of us we had a lot of things we hoped to accomplish, a lot of dreams we thought we could make come true for ourselves. Some of those I will continue to hold, some will be replaced by new goals and dreams as I try to rebuild my own life from the ground up. Some will always remain daydreams, but some are attainable if I am willing to put in the time and effort to pursue them.

As I sit here Jeff is gazing at me from a dozen different frames, smiling gently, encouraging me. I'm going to try to manifest the optimism we had that we would one day be doing great things, but now I will try to couple it with action. Optimism is lovely, but unless I take action I won't accomplish much. I have high hopes that in six months I'll be reporting that I'm well on my way to achieving my goals. Time will tell. Hopefully I will make good use of it.

(cross posted from Kything NaturesZen)