...

I always thought I would see you again. When you left that morning for work, I always believed that you would be returning. I even left for work with a 'see you later' because I had every intention of seeing you later. I had no reason to suspect that I wouldn't. But later never came and it will never come. It doesn't matter what I do or what I try. I will never get that 'later' with you. And knowing this makes me want to vomit. The feeling in my stomach is as though someone is squeezing it and twisting it and it doesn't matter how much I will them to stop they don't.  It makes my throat feel as though it's closing up and it becomes so much harder to breathe. Why were we not allowed our 'later'? Do you know what is going on here without you? Are you aware of my daily struggle with your absence?  Can you feel this pain? Do you feel it too? You promised to stay with me forever Luke. You promised to be my forever man. But you're gone and it hurts. What the fuck am I supposed to do now Perryman?!?!

Even today I remember that morning when I left for work. The morning that you were laid in bed after finishing night shift. I remember kissing you before leaving for work and I remember you pulling me in for a cuddle. I remember the thoughts I'd had. I remember you. But I don't want to have to remember you; I want to have you here with me now making new memories for us BOTH to share!! I don't want to have to rely on my memory of you to feel that you existed and were here. I want to have you here so that I can feel you and touch you.

I look at couples and I just want to punch them in the face. Which is awful, I know. There's no rational explanation for this urge and you'd be telling me to relax. But I don't understand why they get to have what we couldn't. I'm sure this urge to punch people will pass. At least I hope it will.

I hate not seeing you. I hate waking up each day. I hate knowing that there is yet another day I have to survive. I hate knowing that there is another day that I have to continue a life that was never supposed to be. I hate knowing that our path no longer exists and I have to walk an entirely different path all on my own. Because ultimately Luke, I am on my own. People can visit and I can go out and meet up with people. But when it really matters, when the house is too still, when the quiet of the night settles in and everyone is busy with their own lives, when that unmistakable gut wrenching punch in my stomach starts and that heavy weighted, oh-my-god I'm going to cry and can't stop it moment happens...I am alone.

There are no comforting arms to hold me and to tell me that everything is going to be OK. There are no comforting kisses on my forehead, reassuring me that life is going to be OK. There are no hands to wipe away my tears. There is nothing but your absence. There is nothing but the weight of your absence. There is nothing but the quiet and still of the house. There is nothing but my cries and my tears. Because you are gone. The comforting arms, reassuring kisses and hands to wipe away my tears are gone. I have to fight this on my own and I'm beginning to doubt if I'm strong enough to do this same fight each night. I'm exhausted and you are gone.

We should have been celebrating our anniversary yesterday. We should have been together. We should still be together. I just want you back. I'd give anything to have you back. I would do anything if it meant I could have you again. You just need to come home. I just need for this whole thing to all be some shit unfunny joke and for you to come home. We all need you to come home. I wonder what we would have been doing this year for our anniversary? A spa? A romantic picnic like last year? A bike ride round Rutland? Camping? A romantic meal and candle lit bath? Would you have been deployed somewhere with work, meaning we'd be arranging a belated anniversary treat over skype? What would we have done? I know it would have been amazing and we'd have been together and laughing. I miss you laughing. I miss your smile. I miss you.

You look so real in all of your photos. You look so alive. You look so 'here'. It's a struggle to grasp that you are gone. These photos of moments we spent together and of moments you experienced will fall further and further into the past. They will one day become a time of long ago. How can that be? How can you be allowed to fall into the past? How can you be allowed to fall into my past when you were so much meant to be my present and my future? I realised the other day that if I live to make it into my 40s I will have lived more of my life without you than I had with you. There will be a greater portion of my life that I have existed with your absence than I was allowed to live with your presence. Again I find myself thinking, 'What the actual fuck?!' I can't think on this too much because my body just wants to shut down and it takes all of my energy and strength to remember how to breathe. I want you as my future Luke, not as my past. Why did this happen to us? You didn't deserve this. You didn't deserve to be taken. Time isn't going to fix this. Time will just cement in place how permanent this is. It will just define the absence with a greater weight. You are not coming home. We are not getting our 'later'. We are not getting our future together.

I don't think I can write anymore on this post. I am shattered. I'm shattered from living without you and I'm shattered from the daily routines that no longer serve a purpose. I'm just tired. I miss you so much and I love you more than you will ever realise. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Re-building without a design

So not really sure what to say or write. I just feel as though I need to write something. I am so lost right now.

My feelings from the start have not altered. They haven't lessoned. I feel as shit today as I did back then. I feel the same brokenness now, as I did then. I had some strange pre-conceived idea that by this time I wouldn't feel better but that I would find things easier. I believed I would be able to do the normal day to day things with the same ease prior to losing Luke. I believed that by now I would be able to get through a day without it being a constant battle and struggle. I thought by now I wouldn't have to live through the same daily fight of trying to find a point in living and that I wouldn't still be having to fight to choose to do another day without Luke. I thought I would be able to rebuild my life and piece things back together, because I had a pre-conceived idea that by this point, life would have fixed itself and that I would be able to manage life with the same ease as before. But I am wrong. This pre-conceived idea was not realistic and does not match reality in any way, shape or form. How do I feel about that? Disappointed, frustrated, confused. hurt and very concerned!

I'm concerned because this feeling has remained the same. The struggle and the battle have remained the same. The same lack of love for life has remained the same. The same, "What's the point?" feeling has remained the same. Which makes me question whether it will ever alter and be different. Telling me it will get better in time offers no comfort to me and unless you're in this position how could you ever know? How do you know that time will make things better?? They're just empty words and promises. They're just your pre-conceived ideas of how this should work and your pre-conceived ideas of how grief works. I'm as guilty as anyone for having these ideas but actually they don't help. They just offer a gutting disappointment when, in reality, the feelings remain the same and the daily struggle to continue through life remains the same. Telling someone to give it time just adds pressure to this whole process of surviving. It's like putting a deadline on something that actually has no end.

It makes you begin to wonder if you are doing something wrong because things haven't gotten better in time, like people tell you it will. So please don't tell me to give it time, because I am learning that time takes on a very different meaning to those that are grieving and it doesn't work in the same way. Time does not offer comfort and it doesn't appear to pass at the same normal rate. It's been 9 months today and it doesn't feel like I have survived 9 months without Luke. It's gone so fast and so little has changed. Time is a different shape to the bereaved.

So where does all of this leave me now that it's been 9 months? The same place I was when it had only been a few minutes after losing Luke. Completely broken, just placing one foot in front of the other and hoping I don't crash into anything. Part of my struggle is that I believed I should be able to take on the world by now and that I would have somehow started to rebuild my life. I also never believed that I would make it to 9 months without Luke. I never really thought about the future without him and so just expected that it would work itself out. (Not sure when I actually thought this would take place because I've not currently got the energy to do that and I've yet to want to create a new normal without Luke but I guess I thought it would magically happen. Note to self- shit like this doesn't just happen!)

I need for my own sanity to stop trying to rebuild a new life to a design that I don't have. I have no idea what my life should look like without Luke. I have no idea what my life should be without him. At the moment I don't see the point to it. But I know that's a dangerous place to be. I know that I don't want a life with any other man. My life was supposed to be as Luke's wife and nothing will ever match that. I don't want to settle. I want Luke. But I can't have Luke, so I need to rebuild with what I have. I need to take it step by step and place the rebuilding into 'phases'. (Cheers lady!) I've spoken about how I expected things to be easier and because they're not I feel like I'm failing. This is partly because I'm still at the point of needing to take things day by day, hour by hour. And it's ok to be at 9 months and need to do this. Apparently 9 months is no time at all and still very early. It doesn't feel like a long time to me but it sounds like a long time. And because it sounds like a long time I have placed the pre-conceived idea on myself that I should be achieving much more by now. But actually I shouldn't. This is reassuring to know. So the first phase is to give each day a purpose. No matter how small.

Creating a purpose for each day. Even if I don't want to. Even if I don't want to engage with other people or take part in life. I am going to put one thing down that I need to achieve on that day. I am going to go through the motions of existing and of taking part in life even though I don't want to. Because to see no purpose in life and no point to living is not a good or healthy place to be. It may be as simple as make dinner or go out and meet a friend for coffee. (I realise this is something you can all do without even thinking about it, but it's a massive thing to someone that should be sharing their mealtimes with their special someone. It's also exceptionally hard to choose meals because there are some meals I can not eat, as they were mine and Luke's favourites. And meeting a friend for coffee requires me to start yet another day and to interact with someone when all I might want to do is curl up on the sofa in Luke's hoody and cry.) So I just need to write down one thing for each day that I am going to do at some point. (Right now it's go and make a cup of tea!)

Some of you may wonder why I would choose to do these things just for the sake of doing them, even when all I want to do is curl up and vanish from this world without Luke. Well it's because on the days when I stay on the sofa and push the day away, I feel like shit. I haven't achieved anything and I am left with the feeling of 'well I survived another day but I'm doing a pretty shit job and I feel like I've failed.' I no longer view surviving a day as an achievement, even when it is the hardest thing I will ever have to do again in my life. But on the days where I force myself to take part in life (even for a little while) I feel like absolute shit but slightly less of a failure. According to my lady, I need to stop beating myself up.

When everything first happened I was able to organise so much. In the first few weeks I actually got a lot done. I cancelled our wedding and organised Luke's funeral. I interacted with people. But now I don't want to do anything. The lady suggested it was because I organised things that were for other people. I did things for other people. But now life requires me to exist and to do things for me. And I don't see the point, which is also a reason why everything is so much harder. I've lost my purpose. By beginning to do one thing each day, even when I don't want to, isn't going to improve how I feel. It isn't going to make my life easier or the daily struggles easier. My feelings will probably remain exactly the same but my life will start to take a new shape. And this is apparently one way of rebuilding a life with no design or plan.

I'm not really sure what I am supposed to do now. It's all just so surreal. This is not what our life was supposed to look like. :'(

An ever-changing layer

A lot of time has passed since I last wrote, yet everything has remained the same and in my head, time hasn't moved. How is that possible? It's July now and I never thought I was going to make it this far. It doesn't feel like almost 9 months since I last saw you. It doesn't feel like almost 9 months since we were snuggled up together in bed. It doesn't feel like almost 9 months since we were talking about our future together. It doesn't feel like almost 9 months ago that we were so close to being married. I am now closer to the year anniversary of losing you than I am to the event that took you away.

I have tried all sorts of things to survive. None of which have made me feel any better. I think at the moment I am not living, but surviving from day to day. I'm almost certain you wouldn't be happy about this. I feel as though the world around me is blurred and fast moving, while I am still. Like in the films when the focus is on the person standing perfectly still and the people moving are blurred. That's how I feel. Everyone else is moving forwards and life is moving around me. But I'm still stood in that room being told you had been involved in an accident and that you were gone. I'm still in that room being told I can't go and see you.

There are so many different parts to grief that I just didn't realise. This is so different to losing my Dad. I'm constantly battling being rational and logical with how I'm feeling. And how I feel can alter and change so quickly. Sometimes the feelings don't really match with the moment. I look at your clothes and I don't feel sad anymore. I feel numb and lost. I think I also feel a little bewildered and detached. It's wrong that you're not in them. I often wonder what you'd wear when I get dressed, especially on the hot days! But I should feel sad looking at your clothes because that's how I used to feel. But that feeling has been replaced with numbness and disbelief. Your clothes are slowing getting covered in dust and that is sad. I have to keep shaking them off and then I feel like a crazy person for doing it but by the time I've caught myself doing it, it's already done.

Some mornings, I can open your side of the bathroom cabinet and I can cope with seeing your toothbrush and razor and hair gel. But other days I can't. Some days I can easily wear the perfume that you bought me and other days I can't. Some days I can wear the dresses and clothes that I know you loved to see me in and other days I have to put them back into the wardrobe because it's too hard to hold myself together. Some days I can wear my engagement ring and my wedding ring and they make me smile because it reminds me of what we were and what we were going to be. They remind me of how you proposed to me in Jamaica and they make me smile. But other days I can't wear them and I can't look at them because they remind me of what we have lost and it just hurts too much.

This is hard because there is no pattern to grief. There's no one way that works because it's constantly changing. What I can handle one day I can't handle another day. What makes me cry one day will make me laugh the next and vise versa. How am I supposed to work out how to survive the next 60 odd years of my life when I can't even work out how to manage a frigging day without breaking at some point.

There are things that I find really hard and I know that I shouldn't find them hard, which also makes this frustrating. For example, making sure I actually eat something in the day. I have found, when I'm on my own, I just don't have an appetite. I know I need to eat but just don't want to. I don't want to do such a normal task because life isn't normal. Going to bed at night is a normal task but it's so bloody hard because you're not here. I still have to force myself to sleep in the bed and not on the sofa and often I won't go up there until the early hours of the morning. I'm not supposed to be sleeping alone in our home. We're supposed to be spooning and snuggled up and racing to be first in bed, so that the other one has to turn off the lights. I miss our bedtime routine of racing each other up the stairs and playing pants down to try and slow the other one down. I miss brushing our teeth as fast as we can, just to beat the other. I miss you.

Walking into a room should be easy. Should. I don't go in your man room, unless I need to open the window. That's not easy. Your clothes are still exactly where you left them and so is your porridge pot! The talc on the floor, from where you put on your leathers that morning, is still visible on the floor. I really should hoover in there but I feel physically sick at the thought of removing that trace of you that I can't do it. So I haven't done it and I won't do it. But that's also crazy because it's just talc and if you were alive I would have hoovered in there and picked all of your bloody clothes off the floor! On the other hand though, I guess it's not doing any harm to anyone at the moment, so it can just stay. But it's these things that makes grief so confusing. Nothing works as it should.

The lady suggested I should try and spend some time in your man room. By avoiding it, I am apparently denying what has happened and I'm shutting it out. By avoiding the room, I am apparently not allowing myself to grieve. I am shutting out those emotions and feelings that my body needs to go through. But at the moment, it's just too hard. When I step into the room everything feels so heavy. It becomes harder to breathe and harder to focus. It becomes impossible to hold myself together. I don't want to break because it's always so hard to recover and so hard to pull myself back to reality. So at the moment I shut the door and I stay out.

The lady has said that if that's my coping strategy at the moment then that is ok, but to consider what happens to the grief and emotions that I'm avoiding. There's only so long they can be controlled before they bubble over. I thought about this and went in the man room for a whole minute. It pretty much destroyed me, so I gave up and shut the door. I'm just not there yet and that's ok. It's strange though, because when you first left I was able to go into your room. I don't understand why it is so hard now.

Your gym trainers and running trainers are not looking very healthy or hygienic either. I'm sure something is growing on them! I thought about throwing them out because that is what you would have done. I picked them up and then put them straight back down again. I just couldn't do it. I know they're just trainers and I know you would have binned them but I just can't do it. I actually felt like I wanted to be sick when I tried. I guess I feel guilty for binning something of yours because it feels as though I am throwing you away. I'm not throwing you away and I know logically that binning the trainers does not mean I'm throwing away your memory. It doesn't mean I'm throwing away our relationship or disregarding how much I love you. I know this. But it feels as though I am throwing you away and, at the moment, that is over-taking the logical side of me. So your trainers are going to continue to grow what ever gross stuff it wants.

Apparently in the stages of grief there is a re-organisation of life. This is where those who are left behind begin to rebuild their lives and they begin to pull the pieces of life back together. They begin to re-engage with life. They become more functional and better at handling the day to day pressures of life. They are able to control when the memories hit them and they are able to create a new normal.

I don't want to move into the re-organisation stage of grief because I feel as though I would be saying, "It's ok that you're gone." And it isn't ok. It isn't ok that you have left me here to live our life without you. It isn't ok that you don't get to laugh and smile and live anymore. It is not ok that our wedding was cancelled and we all had to say good bye to you. It is not ok that I don't get to kiss you anymore. It is not ok that I can't hear you laughing or telling me not to be mad. IT IS NOT OK!!!!!  I feel as though by re-organising my life, it is dissolving your memory and who we were to each other. I feel as though it's being disloyal to your memory and to how much I love you. But I know that this is not how it really is. I know realistically and rationally, I have to re-organise life at some point. I know that this re-organisation is supposed to happen at some point. But I don't feel like I'm there yet. I don't want my life to adjust to life without you. I don't want a new normal. I want you and I want us.

At Christmas time I went away because we should have been on our honeymoon and I just couldn't be in the house and when I came home I discovered that our home had flooded. Until the flood, I had no intention of changing anything in the house, except maybe painting the living room. But that was all I was going to change. Everything else was going to remain the same. Then it flooded and I was forced to change everything. I was force to move your things. I was forced to move your cereal and protein shakers. I was forced to move your clothes and to move the things you had left laying about.

I can't even describe how hard that was or the stress that caused or even count the number of times I broke because the house was changing from what it was to a new way. I hated it. I hated having to make the decisions without you. Yet if you had been here, I'm sure I would have been the bossy one saying what I wanted and it would have been easy and exciting. But it didn't feel exciting and it certainly wasn't easy. I wanted to be sick every time I had to make yet another decision without you. I found I was constantly battling with what I wanted, with what I thought you would like and trying to play out what the compromise would have been. This is all very hard to do especially when the people asking for the decision are stood in front of you wanting an answer there and then because actually it was a really simple decision to make.

But to me, having to make yet another change that I never intended to make in the first place was fucking hard. I found myself saying a few times that I just didn't care because I just couldn't cope with having to change something else and having to think of what you would have liked or what you would have done. It was easier to hand the decision over to someone else. I put pink in the hallway and instantly regretted it. I definitely over stepped the mark with that. The deep pink I know I could have gotten away with for a while, because I'd have bought you steak and dressed nice and taken your mind of the fact that I'd just pinked up the hallway ;) but the other pink really was a step too far. You would not have been impressed! If you were alive and I had done this I would have laughed and we would have re-painted it and there wouldn't have been a problem. And you probably would have been a little mad followed up with, "Oh my God Dee!!"

But you aren't here so I sat at the top of the stairs, staring at the door of your man room and cried for hours. How it is even possible to cry that much is beyond me. But that's what I did. And I felt like a crazy person. It was just paint on a wall. It wasn't the end of the world. It could be fixed. But I knew you'd hate it and I couldn't cope with that. So I just cried. I hate the fact that at a time when I wanted the world to stand still and when I wanted everything to freeze in time, I was forced to change everything. The flood forced me to rip out our home and even if I'd put everything back to exactly as it was, it still wouldn't be the same; it would have still been change. God is such a dick sometimes. The hallway has now been re-painted and looks much better. I'm still doubting if you'd have done it that way but I just don't have it in me at the moment to think about this, so it will stay that way for a little while.

I'm slowly trying to make our home a place that I can stay without breaking everyday.  I was forced to alter everything downstairs but I'm trying to take control of some of the other changes. I have moved the fish tank to the living room and removed the table and chairs from the dining room. We don't need a table anymore because it's just me and I don't need anymore reminders that you are gone, so I've removed the table that we would sit at and once I have a sofa in there, I will remove the two chairs because we don't need two chairs anymore. Change is really hard. it's even harder without you.

Grieving sucks. It doesn't end. It doesn't switch off and it can't be hidden from. It's just there. It's a constant layer that changes and moves and just when you think you've got a handle on it, it shifts again. Bastard thing.

I think I've rambled a lot in this blog and I've just run out of energy now, so maybe I'll come back to it later. I started it at 3am because I couldn't sleep and then came back to it late morning but I'm done for the day now.

I miss you Perryman and I love you a little bit...A LOT!! xxxxxxxx