The Questions

How was Ryan any different than the 400 others that he worked with?
Why do those that whine and complain, that are never satisfied, even those that are mean and cruel - why do they still financial stability, happiness, friends and parties, families that love and support them? Why do they get a husband or wife to spoon at the end of the night? Why has everyone forgotten about him? Why do I not matter anymore - why did you lie and tell me I did?

Where did everyone go? 

What did he do to not deserve peace? What did I do to not deserve happily ever after? 

Philosophy Friday: When We Are Fighting Our Hardest

I think it applies to anyone that kindness makes a much bigger difference when someone is at at their lowest -- and perhaps most unlovely -- versus when they're on top -- or easiest to love.

Alternately, on my "good" or "not bad" days, I'm still fighting. It's still exhausting.

I came home today

I came home today.

Traffic was light. I pulled up at 4:48. Turned into our neighborhood and realized

...I am early, but it doesn't matter.

Because he isn't there.

I have 7 hours and 12 minutes left in my day. And no one to spend it with. Because they all left. But even if they were here...the person that I could survive even alone with he isn't here.

I could have spent hours with him, snuggled into bed, made a meal, gone out for dinner or a drink.

Talked. Touched. Smiled.

I don't walk around expecting him to appear. I know that, I learned that, I've lived that for the last 8 months and 5 days. But I still get the heart pangs when something hits me unexpectedly and I realize - it can't go back to the way it was. It will never be the same.

I miss you Sweetheart

They Don't Want to Know

A lesson I was not ready to learn. For me, it was less than 3 months.
Whatever you do, release them from the obligation they so obviously don't want...
for it will protect you more than false promises and pain of secondary loss right at the
point that your shock begins to wear off and the initial fog breaks.

The "Worst" Loss

“Losing a child IS the WORST”

I don’t know…

 

I don’t know what it is like to create and carry a child for 9 months

I only know that I was supposed to – that I had picked an OB/GYN who would let him deliver when the time came because it was an event he wanted to experience more than anything.
“I’ve delivered enough crack babies, I want to with my own.”

I don’t know what it’s like to birth a child

I only know that when our gross little mess of new life was laid on my chest, that I’d look at him or her and say “Hello Nolan” or “Hello Elyse”. That this step in life was ours to take together, and he was the only one I'd wanted to try it with. I only know that he had claimed the name of his first son years before and had signed off a week prior to his death on my suggestion for our daughter.

I don’t know what the "firsts" were like: to hear the first words, first “I love you”, or see the first smile

I only what it feels like to play on repeat our last conversation, remember our last words running them through my brain every day, to hear his last “I Love You”, and to remember how he smiled at me specifically - to remember the unique smiles of intimacy and love.

I don’t know what it’s like to pick a little boy up from scraped knees, broken bones, and tell him “It’s ok”

I only know what it feels like to get the call that he’s in the hospital and to leave dinner to go be with him, to rub his feet because he’s been on them all day, to massage his back because the muscle that tore still hurts just standing for too long. I only know what it’s like when he tells me it’s hurting and he’s frustrated and he’s tired, to wrap my entire body around him and tell him it’s ok while wracking my brain to figure out what I can do to keep him from hurting any more. And for my answer to still not keep him here or stop the hurting before it was too late.

I don’t know what it’s like for a teenage boy high on hormones to yell “I hate you!” and to still love him

I only know what it’s like for a grown man at a low point of depression to say
“I don’t want you” and to still love him.

I don’t know what it’s like to pour my life into someone every day for 18 years

I only know that it was my responsibility to take care of him now. That for many every day “will be” different now, but for me every day “IS” different because he was the most important person in my life and he was present every day. I only know that I was blessed to have him for 1,252 days, and that it will never be long enough. I only know that I feel robbed of 50 more years with my Every Day.

 …I only know how frustrating and unhelpful it is to have your pain, which is so excruciating and overwhelming, not justified and to hear from others that it is still not as bad as another.

I only know me. I know that I hurt for his mom; that thankfully she is seemingly the only person that hasn't attempted to compare. Thankfully we have looked at each other and said "I don't even know how you..." and we respect the different love, the different relationship, and the different travel within grief that each other is going through. For that I am so grateful.

When I was Twelve

When I was twelve I wanted a white poufy dress and flowers galore.  I wanted a wedding.
Being a tomboy I wasn't ever the one sitting around picking out wedding colors and floral arrangements and naming all my future kids. But if I thought about it, I knew one day, that the traditional wedding was something I'd get to enjoy. Tomboys can still be Daddy's girls - you look forward to the walking down the aisle moment.

When I was sixteen I wanted kids.
I didn't know how many or when, but similar to the twelve year old, I saw that happening. The last two weeks of my sixteenth year, after dozens of trips to the ER, years of visits to the OB/GYN and a second, 7 hour surgery at Walter Reed, I found out that was not a certainty I could be given. "We'll talk about it when you get to that stage in life" was the answer I'd been left with. I spent the next ten years convincing myself kids weren't necessary for my happiness. If I held onto that dream, it was likely that I would try and fail and putting motherhood on a pedestal seemed like a way to get really hurt down the line.

When I was twenty-two I wanted something small and intimate. I wanted a marriage.
I imagined my future husband and I would be fronting most of the expense and I'd realized watching others marry that the wedding business was a nightmare of dollar signs and more choices than you could imagine. A rustic-chic celebration of hopes and futures with my complement, my partner, my other half. I was still waiting for him.

When I was twenty-six I'd found him and I wanted a union with my best friend.
I wanted to head to Thailand for two weeks to celebrate us, to give us both a much-needed break from life and stress and a temporary escape from all things bearing down. Eloping was the perfect way to wrap up the commitment we'd make and the hard work we'd already put in. It was the icing on the cake - letting him surf as much as he wanted and sit relaxed on a beach; it was me eating as many noodles as I could and trekking into the jungle for adventure and once-in-a-lifetime experiences. Memories we'd review with smiles on our faces decades from that time. It wasn't about show, it wasn't about anyone else's opinions. It was a $200 lace dress, a pair of Toms, and my soulmate. It was the start of trying for babies, even if I failed. It was scary as shit, but He was worth it.

A month and a day before the end of my twenty-sixth year, my most mature vision of committed love was robbed right out of my hands. Violently. An intense weekend of depression visited my kind, intelligent, compassionate, sacrificial, Life-of-the-Party fiance and suicide stole My Every Day right out from under me. He was mine to protect and to care for; he was mine to support and love; but he was gone.

Eight months and 2 days after my soul was crushed, the best idea of the direction I should be taking rests on a new philosophy: not everyone gets Happily Ever After.

What a bullshit lesson. Sometimes it's innocent children, 8 years old, that life teaches that to; others are slammed with that reality at 26 and some wander through life eternally oblivious to this reality. They'll quip "life's not fair" while having never experienced what that actually looks like. I think the most likelihood of surviving this nightmare that I wake up to will only happen if I can stop trying to attain "Happily Ever After". 

I don't like this lesson, I don't want it, I hate it. But it feels like the lesson Life is trying to teach me.

An Assault On Myself By Myself

Maybe I’m remembering this all wrong. Maybe I’m not the person I think I am. I have grasped tightly to the label “widow” as its definition most closely mirrors how I view myself, but is that even wrong? Do I even deserve that? I would have done anything for you, Ryan. We talked about this and I was setting everything up to make that happen because it was best for you – so it was necessary for us.

The abandonment by those around me, the ones who promised when no promise was requested, the ones who never made a promise to begin with, the ones you expected by default to stay and the ones you truly felt would…have they left because I carry a tag they think I do not deserve? Have they made the connections in the string of events, cast their blame, and turned their backs on me because of it? I hate them for doing that but I understand that decision, because I do carry the blame. I have chosen, months later now, to learn from the regrets but am nowhere near forgiveness for the guilt. The bits and pieces that are separated into those 2 piles are very well defined now; I am rational at least, enough to see that. Regrets would not have changed the outcome, they would have simply provided better memories to me, the survivor, and maybe for my Love, though not survived. The horrible details that are placed in the guilt pile are the ones which undoubtedly would have kept him here by my side. I do not wish for them to be in that pile, I do not choose them to be. They simply are. Perhaps then, to others, I am a person so unloveable and painful to be around that removing me entirely is a rational decision I just cannot see for myself. 

Perhaps I an addict to grief and unwilling to admit it.

I know my brain is warped. In a bizarre way it’s almost as if I can feel that I am not just chemically but structurally different.  Feeling physiologically incapable of tasks that you were otherwise competent to perform is so incredibly frustrating.

I want Ryan back. I also want my brain back. I don’t need a diagnosis because I already recognize this environment that I am residing in – one so atypical for me. I sit back as a casual observer wondering who this person is with an obvious aphasia, with anxiety, the woman who cannot retain information, who cannot carry conversations on with multiple people at a time because the conversations in her head cannot be kept separate from those flowing from her lips. Who is that person? This woman who observes herself externally…she studied this, this was her passion, the study of neurobiology put a smile on her face and woke her up for years on early mornings and kept her locked in a dark room late at night to better understand this phenomenal structure that is the mammalian brain.

That woman is now trapped by a mind she cannot escape, by a brain that attacks her when she least expects. Her decisions over the last 7 months and 15 days have not always been logical or appropriate, though she extends to herself forgiveness for those. But how do you continue to wake up when waking up entails constantly fighting yourself to hit a level best described as functional? If struggling for that is the best I’ve got, and if that alone exhausts me, how will I ever expect to hit a plane dubbed successful again? Why, Brain, why are you attacking me? Why, Body, are you so slow to recover and so quick to break down? I am not wallowing, I am fucking trying!