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