What even is normality anymore? My normal consists of waking up and missing you. It consists of waking up and hurting. The kind of hurt you couldn't even begin to imagine. My normality is the same self argument I have every time I wake up: Should I start another day without you? Or just take a sleeping pill and skip it for a few hours longer? Do I take on the fight of surviving this pain or put it off for a bit longer? My normal is looking at your side of the bed, untouched and unslept in and trying not to break down and cry. It is seeing your dressing gown hung next to mine, unworn for far too long. My normal is seeing your toothbrush gathering dust. My normal is having no more messages from you, no more cuddles with you, no more kisses from you. It is eating alone. It is making it through one event to the next with no real aim or focus or any real care for anything anymore.
If living with you was like tasting every exotic amazing mind blowing flavour that there is, then living without you is like chewing ash. It has become pointless and a chore. I go through the motions of life and social situations but I don't really care much for them anymore because you're gone. I have to force myself to take part. I have to force myself to take part in life. I'd rather not but I don't think that's a great option to be honest. I float through life now without really paying much attention to it. I feel completely disconnected to it all. Yet on the outside to others I think I appear to be quite 'with it' and 'normal' and just like 'me'. But I'm not me anymore. I don't feel like me anymore and everything takes so much more effort. A conversation takes a lot of energy to remain focused and I find that I drift in and out of it and hope I haven't missed anything important! So apologies if you ask me a question and I don't respond.
Tomorrow I have to return to 'normal'. But it can't be this new normal. I somehow have to force it to be the old normal. The old routine. I have to return to a life I had when you were here, except I have to do it all without you. I'm not sure if I can. I'm not sure if this is going to work. This time last year we were so excited (well I was probably more excited than you!) because we were on the count down to our wedding! Just one whole school term and then we were going to be husband and wife! It was going to be amazing. But that isn't happening this time round. Now there is this wait between school starting and the one year anniversary of you leaving. Fuck. It's not even a full half term. Double fuck.
I will be back to doing the same old thing that I was doing when you left. It just feels so wrong. To be back to that normal and doing what I was doing on the day that you left just feels as though I'm saying you didn't matter. That you leaving didn't matter. That somehow your leaving hasn't altered my life. But you DO matter. It DOES matter. And my life has been forever altered. In fact it's been completely smashed off course. It feels wrong to be allowed to carry on without you, as though nothing has happened. Because something has happened. And every moment of the day is a battle. Even though I look OK. I am not OK. But despite all of this...tomorrow I have to return to the old normal.
Being a widow sucks. It really sucks. Most other people are able to move on with their lives and just continue as they were always planning to. But I'm stuck and there isn't anything I can do to alter that. I've tried and I do get that seeing this can make others feel very awkward. But I can't just skip over what's happened and I'm doing the best that I can. I learned the other day that I wasn't invited to something. That hurt. But I kinda understand why but it still hurt. I guess there isn't much room for a widow among happy couples.
Oh Luke. You were supposed to be my entire story and my happily ever after. Our stories were supposed to be linked and connected all the way to the end, with sequels and a whole flipping boxset! But instead you became a chapter in my story. You aren't supposed to be one chapter though. You're supposed to be the entire story. My story and our story. It was all going so perfectly and it feels as though someone has just ripped out the ending of our story. Without waiting for any neat moment in time...they've just decided to rip out the pages of our story from the only copy. And now I'm just left hanging and left to wonder what the rest of our story could have been.
How are any of us supposed to continue? I feel as though there are a million and one things to say and yet I'm all empty of words, Tonight I feel as though I want to scream but what is the use in that? Tonight I want to disappear and not resurface again. But that's not possible. I don't want the old normal and I don't want a new normal. I want to shut out everything and just vanish. I want to be with you again. I want to see you and hear you and feel you. I want you back, I want to hear you say you love me. But I can't. So now I have to do the old normal because I've run out of options and life clearly doesn't stand still.
I miss you Perryman. You're my everything and life has just lost all it's flavour and colour without you. I wish you were here with me. I wish I could see you again. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
