=\

I'm tearing myself apart.


This is all I've ever known. It's how I was born and how I'll be.

The good times were just a dream.

Sardines

12 posts... 6... 1... March, April, May. I managed to update this one time last month! Determined to do this more often. This first one is a half cheat copied from some other post, but it counts.

More of the same house woes of course...

I'm moving at the end of August. I'm only renting but it was still 'our' place. I took pictures of the house for memories before starting to pack, but even then I was sad at the minor changes that have occurred over the past 11 months without him. I was sad at the ones that happened during his cancer, but at least he was still here.

So, we were thinking of buy this house. Packing up our former life... it is indescribable to people who don't get it. They don't realize all the little things I come across. All at once, it all crashes down.

Last August we were supposed to be having our wedding reception in the back yard. Instead, the empty house awaited my return from burying him across the world. One year later and it will be all gone.

It saddens me too, as I know I will be stepping backwards in luxury. Ok so it's just some 80s house with a weird leak in the ductwork when it storms, but it's the nicest place I've ever lived in. It was a family home. We had a real yard. Room for More that can now never be. Where there once was some joy and excitement in moving onwards and upwards, to offset the ugly practicalities of it... there is now none. I looked. They all suck. I know I will hate the dirty walls of whatever hole I move into. I know there will be no room for growing happiness, just faded hopes and dreams packed into a sardine can... and it'll be like this for Years until I get my act together, figure out who I am, if ever.

Packing up sucks. It's just another smack on the head by the grief monster.

Dragging large mattresses and bed frames around also sucks. I already have a bad back and it was hard enough sliding these things Down the stairs. I looked into selling them, but it was another reminder of how alone I am. Number one tip seems to be don't let strangers from Craigslist into your basement, and don't meet them alone.

Selling multiple beds/bedroom furniture from guest room that will never be occupied because I have no friends. In decent condition. Meet me at the Starbucks. I'll be in the Southwest corner with the double beds, red shirt.

I walk through walls.

Wow I didn't know that anybody read this. I'm not feeling much today, just tired from it all. Felt like I should update this, as it's yet another failed thing that I've let slide. Can't stick with anything now. But I don't even know what to say. Just missing my P. Grey, gloomy cold day. Trying not to feel too much.

Had a briefly good, then bad night a few days ago courtesy of some vodka mixer. The week before that I was actually not bad... waking up early and the weather was nice. I bought plants for some reason to put on the deck, and ate breakfast outside and did some yard work which I like. Then it got cold, rainy, I started waking up late again, and a lot of the plants died. Guess that good week was a silly fantasy world anyway.

I have to make the decision to leave our house and let my landlord know. Tonight. The thought sickens me, but I haven't found any bags of money buried in the yard so I know what I have to do. I hate the thought of leaving 'our' house. It's the only thing that comforts me. I can zone out on our couch during a tv show and forget things for a while. I'm grateful for that even, because it's progress from where I was at a month or two out where I couldn't even go a few seconds without thinking of the pain. I know he's not coming back and we'll never get to build our life together in this house like we planned, but moving into some hole in a cheaper city isn't something I'm looking forward to.

I don't want to change my cable/phone/internet because it won't be under his name anymore. I don't want to have to pack up his shoes from the front hall closet. It would be weird to put them back out in a new place. I don't want to lose the smell in the bedroom. Sometimes it smells like him. Rarely, but sometimes. Moving means it never will. None of this is logical or really should matter, but it does.

I'd rather not think about anything at all and just sleep the year away... which I almost have. It was 10 months yesterday. I ate the other half of the meal I froze on Valentine's Day. I'm not eating enough again.

>Insert Radiohead Lyrics<

That there
That's not me
I go
Where I please
I walk through walls
I float down the Liffey
I'm not here
This isn't happening
I'm not here
I'm not here

In a little while
I'll be gone
The moment's already passed
Yeah it's gone
And I'm not here
This isn't happening
I'm not here
I'm not here

Pebbles

P was my rock, no my Earth, my entire existence rotated around him. He was my everything. If something happened he was There. He actually Cared. What is there now? Some people care, but it's not the same. They don't care about everything like he did. They only care about little parts of me, and with different tolerances for the convenience of caring.

I hate trying to fill the void now. Spreading it all out among the pebbles in my life. Some are a little bigger, maybe like a backhoe-only movable garden stone for family and really close friends. But even then, they can roll away, they're not my existence and I'm definitely not theirs. They don't text funny stories because the second they hear a funny story they think of telling me. They don't help cook my dinner because they know it would make Me happy. ME!

I can't believe P cared about little old me, but he did. It makes me cry to think that someone so amazing could give a rip about me. Now I'm this sad and pathetic thing. Most of my friends are virtual. I even started going on random chats to add people to my instant messengers, just to feel like someone cared. To add more pebbles.

There's a guy I added, he got a little too attached, but I loved it. Didn't even like him that much, was a total settle 'good enough' thing. How fucking terrible. But I just miss P actually caring, so I guess some fake caring from a fake person who didn't even really know the real me was the best I can get now. Some shitty 'r u there?' IM waiting when I get home, or maybe I can even check it from my cell phone, as if people really know or care the rare times I'm out and about. P would have. That guy turned out to be a turd instead of a pebble anyway. Makes me sick to think of how special P was and how hurtful, mean and mediocre at best everyone else is.

The other night at home, I slipped and fell. Messed up my knee, it hurt so bad. Nobody was there and nobody cared. Nobody knew how excruciating the pain was, and nobody heard me scream the f word at the top of my lungs and sob because P wasn't in his room. He wasn't rushing out to check on me, with a waft of warm air and his sweet special smell. I loved that sleepy smell he had. I just lied on the floor shaking with the phone in my hand in case I started to pass out. I wanted to call 911 so somebody would know I died and feed my (our) little cat.

I'm too chicken to kill myself, what if I got it wrong and there is some kind of afterlife and somehow I don't get to be with P if I purposely kill myself? If there was an accident though.. and it was nice and quick... all I can say now is "oh well". How absolutely terrible it is, that life, which should be my most precious thing ever has been reduced to 'oh well'. The most precious thing I had was him.

It's all gone now because of cancer.

Fucking pity party

Right now, I hate myself. I hate who I am, who I'm becoming, and what I'm not.
I also hate my life. I LOVE what it was, hate what it is, and hate what it's not.

I feel like such a loser. I started a night class tonight, and we had to do the dreaded introductions. I hate explaining myself to people. I hate that I have no response to their questions. My name, what do I during the day, where I'm from. I can't even answer all that. What do I say? I'm an unemployed loser wasting money on a night class so I can feel human. I'm widowed and 29. Yes that is too young to be widowed. Yes that is too old to start life all over again. Yes I'm wasting my degrees and I do nothing during the day.

This isn't even what's really bugging me. Or is it? I don't know who I even am anymore. I just want P back so the shotgun blast that cancer tore through my life could be stuffed back up with love and purpose in the proper way.

You know, I haven't posted since the 9th because I got drunker than ever before that night. I haven't had any since, but it was a new low. I dumped all my thoughts out on someone and let them see me at my worst, which scares me to death.

I tried mending my wound with other things, it didn't work. I destroyed them and ripped it right open. I fucking hate all this.

Happy Anniversary

...or something.

Last year minus a week:
P snuck out of the house, blind from his cancer, with his little walker. He sat by the bus stop determined to get to the mall to buy me a wedding ring. A neighbour he met on a walk, who was a cancer survivor herself happened to pass by him. She offered him a lift to the mall and helped him pick out a ring for me. A week later (April 9) he proposed to me in our favourite restaurant.

I can't even write the story properly, I'm a mess.

I bought his favourite food, from the Royal Shawarma. We used to go in there all the time and it would be a great night. The smell killed me on the way home, it just smells like good times. When I got home there was two forks in the bag and I cried. I wish he was here to eat it with me.

There's only about 1 shot left of his favourite, Jim Beam. I think I'm going to have half now, and split the rest into whatever other days I'll be celebrating him. The mickey of rum will fill in the rest. I'm going to go rot on the couch and watch our favourite shows and just wallow in shittiness with his food. Fuck life.

9 days

It's April 9, Saturday will be 9 months.

I don't remember much of April. I seriously wasted it away on the internet watching cartoons, junk on You Tube, reading comics, chatting, totally BS-ing the time away. I think I've listened to The Ballad of the Beard for an hour of my life. Add another hour for Comb Your Beard (at Night).

I didn't look for a job, I didn't clean the house, I didn't clean out the cat's box every day. I didn't compost the banana that fell on the floor. I didn't eat 3 meals a day or even 2. I bought milk and it's currently rotting. I am too lazy to even watch LOST. I ruined my sleep again so that I'm waking in the evenings.

My accomplishments: I coloured some eggs. I ate them even after they turned rubbery. I made an internet friend. I broke my camera lens and then bought a new one. I did my laundry once and I finally cleaned up the pan in the sink that I made pizza in about a week ago. I got a haircut (my last one was 11 months ago for our wedding which didn't happen.) I returned a hoard of empties.

Fulfilling life.

Switch to the other dimension where I am married. In it P is cancer-free, we visited Australia and possibly Italy. We have full time jobs and are buying the house I'm currently renting. We play games together online and simply enjoy each other's company. We have some separate hobbies and I love watching him come home and tell me how his squash game went. We cuddle on the couch and fall asleep talking about good times from the past while planning more for the future.

I wish I could rip a hole into that dimension and climb through. In this one even I don't exist anymore. I feel like I appeared in this body a month ago and am totally faking being human.

Easter

So I had Easter with the family. P really should have been there. It's so wrong without him. My cousin had his woman there, they looked really happy together. I could tell they had the sort of inside jokes going that me and P had. I'm happy for him because he's older now and probably would have made a good dad, but things never worked out. It still made me sad though. Nobody asked how I was except my aunt. I love her for it.

I've been thinking a lot the past few days, I think I really should move. It scares the hell out of me, but really my life in this city is shattered and I don't know anybody here. I might as well move back near the few people I do know. I keep going there anyway to go hiking. Thinking about it is one thing, it took me so many months before I could even entertain the idea. Actually moving is another. What if it's a terrible idea? I have a million doubts. Sometimes his room smells like him for no reason, the new one won't. The place will probably be crappier and If I leave I can never come back. I feel like I left that life already though, even though I'm still here. I'm not even me. I have no idea how I'll feel about it in August when I'd have to move, I'm so all over the place. Hate this.

I'm still feeling this spring high. I got my hair cut today and I always feel so great after that. It was nice out too. I hope I don't make a bad decision about moving just because I'm in this mood to be out and about and running around now.

Spring

It's spring. Warm air, stuff coming to life. Something just clicked in me and I ended up talking with someone the other day on a chat site (an attractive male). I know they don't know me. I know they don't give a crap about me. I know it's too much effort to make a real friend. I know we won't be cuddling on the couch watching Dexter. I know I'll never meet them for real and they'll disappear back into the abyss of the internet and I'll feel worse. I know they're not P. I know it won't end up being anything and I'm just waiting to regret it all. Fucking spring.

Ants

Ants are coming to life again. The really tiny ones, spilling in from who knows where, to converge on a miniscule chip crumb. It reminds me of when P dropped a peanut under his chair. He liked to eat the ones with shells, I guess it was something to do after he went blind. Really it was slim pickins for entertainment considering we both lived on the computer and the text to speech software still barely made anything accessible. The internet is a clusterf*** of terribly designed websites.

Anyway last spring he was sitting there all cute and covered in bits of peanut shells. He had a special chair to help him up because his knees were weak from all the drugs. He lost a peanut through all the motors and mechanisms, and the next day the ants had made a superhighway underneath and were swarming around it. He was so sorry.

I wish I could tell him it didn't matter in the least, it was just a stupid peanut. I'm pretty sure I did at the time, but I want to tell him none of that crap mattered. He would struggle to find a frozen meal or a yogurt in the fridge on his own and make a mess and be so sorry, and all I cared about was that he felt bad and I wanted to protect him. He'd get stuck in some menus on the tv remote trying to listen to his favourite channels and was frustrated and worried he'd messed some settings up. I wanted to scream at all the things that were designed poorly. At the descriptive video service that required going through a pile of visual-only menus to turn it on, and was only really available for Corner Gas and sometimes stand-up comedy (absurd). I wanted to collect him in my arms and tell him I could make it all right and not to worry, I would just love him enough and the cancer would disappear. I want to tell him over and over again that only he mattered.

I wish he was here, the walls don't talk back.

Just A Taste

I really had a taste of the good life and now it's gone. I'm sick of this shit, I just want P back. I'm not even remotely ready to date but I already think everyone out there sucks. I kind of hated the masses anyway before this, but now I'm more bitter, more cynical. Those people I hate are still out there. They didn't get cancer. That alone proves to me there's no reason for anything, shit just happens. If things had a meaning then he would never even get a cold, and murderers and rapists would be filling up with cancer. Instead... this. BS life.

I don't even know how he was available when we met, I can't imagine a miracle like that can ever happen to me again. I don't even want it to, I wish I wasn't in this situation at all and I could just have him back.

Depressing.

I got some family photos back from 2007 today. He was in them looking so awesome and solid and cancer free and happy. We had such good times. I don't even feel like going over them now. My eyes are already sore and I'm too tired to cry again.

Low

I'm trying to fix my messed up body clock again so that I'm not waking up in the evening. Usually I do this by staying up all night and day, but I didn't make it. I fell asleep from 2pm-11pm which is madness. Nightmares on the couch and a sore neck, great. I slept again this morning from 8am-10am so maybe I'm good for a week or so of being on schedule with the humans.

Last night while I was up was a new low I think. I miss P so much and there is nothing I can do. I worry this will make me crazy. I worry it's ruining any small chance I had at even pretending to fit into society. I feel like those people on that Hoarders show, only there's no visible hoard. It's all inside me. Hormones makes it seriously unbearable, I hate being female. They didn't used to send me into serious depressions. I'd love to have a bunch of cramps instead. Physical f-ed upness beats mental f-upness.

Today's a new day though, I feel a bit better. I ate a human breakfast before noon which is an accomplishment. Maybe I'll go take pictures of spring bulbs.

Right now my cat is keeping me sane. I'm glad P wanted to get one and I'm glad she picked him out. I tell her she's supposed to take care of me for him. I love when she wakes me up, purring and pushing her face into mine. Sometimes she falls asleep downstairs and wakes up and I've gone to sleep upstairs. She has a few rapid cries and I let her know where I am and she comes running. It's the closest I get now to someone caring that I exist in the day to day. My grey angel. My little familiar.

Life is work but I'm not working

I still have no job. I'm actually looking now and hoping to find Something, but it's depressing. I'm intelligent enough and got good grades. I'm sure most people think of what I could have, should have been, but I never had a 'career'.

The stuff I learned in university is 98% faded away. After that I was lazy, scared, and lacking self confidence, so instead of working I started helping my grandparents out with things. My grandmother passed away most likely from a doctor's negligence and her husband was lost. He was in a worse state than I am now, if that's possible. He was a very quiet man, and his English wasn't great, and they were together forever. I took care of him for a while and it even turned into a full time thing where his son paid me a bit. I decided I was going to go back to school. It was a stupid idea. I hated the program and the only good that came out of it was meeting one friend. My grandfather had to go into a home, and it was my fault. He was so alone and scared, and I knew he was in there because of me.

This is around when I met P online. He eventually moved here to be with me, and I decided to finish what I started and get a diploma for something I found to be incredibly boring and tedious. I had a 1 year paid co-op (internship) type thing, and worked there another summer. That's the closest I got to a real job. It was boring and I hated the thought of actually working there with all the multibilliondollarpolitics but near the end I was a bit proud of some small Walmart promo of mayonnaise that I worked on. It sits in my desk covered in dust and probably bloating full of salmonella now.

After that I finished my last semester and got this slow tedious piecework job as a subcontractor for the company I worked at before. Basically the more I did, the more I made. It was slow going but I got into a groove for a month or two, around the time P was having symptoms and figuring out his diagnosis. I couldn't concentrate at all and had to resign when I found out it was cancer. My boss looked at me a certain way and mentioned that his last wife had had cancer. I knew what it meant but didn't want to say anything. I was scared shitless for P.

I haven't worked since and that was October 2008. I stopped playing the online game we met in and had played daily for like 8 years. That was my social network. We lived off his disability payment and my entire life revolved around cancer and trying to make him as happy as he could be. It sort of revolved around that anyway before the cancer, but now I was extra devoted.

Now I have nothing. I've hated working at every single random job I have had since I was a teenager. Everyone my age is rolling into the rewarding part of their professional (and personal) career. If they aren't, their spouse is and they're at home taking care of the baby they just popped out. At least this is what Facebook leads me to believe.

I feel so tired all the time, like I'm an 80 year old war vet. Like life passed by really fast, and I skipped a lot of the stages and there is no going back. At the same time, I feel like I'm 18 years old and I just graduated high school. Like a scared teen unsure what's supposed to happen next. At least back then it was normal to just defer adulthood by going to university. At least back then there was a billion possibilities and I knew my life had barely got started. Anything was possible.

Now I feel like a crippled withering teenager. I have nothing to look forward to. I don't want to die because it would make my parents sad. I don't want to tell them that because it would make them sad. I have two IRL friends, and I talk to a few people online. I sleep all day, maybe 12-15 hours. No matter what I do, my body resets into a horrible schedule where I'm up all night and sleep all day. I can .. I forget the word... rationalize? scrutinize? whatever. I can look at it all I want and know that I'm staying in bed because it's easier. Because I might have a dream with P in it. Because that's better than real life. Because night is easier to fill than day, I feel less obligated to be 'productive' by some imaginary rules of society. I can browse the net, clean the kitchen and watch tv until the sun rises, beat myself up for not going to bed earlier, try to sleep and fail unless I am exhausted, and then wake up at sunset and hate myself.

My therapist thinks a regular schedule would help me. So do I. I just can't enforce it though, it just feels impossible. Sometimes I HAVE to get up and it's hellish for a few days while I readjust. I used to be fine on 6 hours sleep, now I NEED about 10 but 12 is better. I always return to this stupid night schedule. What's wrong with me?

I always had this darkness in me, this failure. P would keep it in check though. I would go to bed because I wanted to be as normal as I could (in that respect) for him. I wanted to someday get a job and feel happy about myself and make him proud. I've never felt good about myself. The only time I had some confidence was in that online game when I met him. I was good at playing my character, and he was giving me attention. His compliments and the fact that he actually liked me were and are the only proof I can cling to that I'm not worthless. Now those are gone and I'm just alone. Sometimes my cat rubs my face, and I like that.

Who would possibly want to hire this mess?

I hate my life now.

Recluse

In keeping with my theme of doing things all-or-nothing, I seem to go through these stages of just disappearing. I'm alone whether or not I'm around other people, so it just seems easier to be alone. At least I can talk to P and be a mess. Even chatting with people online, keeping up with Facebook or typing random dribbles in this blog is too much. How lazy.

Going to bed after sunrise, and waking up in the evening isn't helping. I've been looking for a job, but it scares the shit out of me. I feel like I've been away from the tedium of 'normal' people for so long, that I'll never be able to fit in. How can I possibly work when I'm hitting the snooze when the alarm goes off at 4pm after 13 hours sleep?

Just sitting there and watching tv is so much easier than all this. Whenever I think about how shitty my life is now without Steve, it depresses me. Tv makes it all a blank slate (for the most part) so I can just sit back like a zombie. Everything is just another form of filling time anyway. I wish that I knew if I'm going to see P again. That would be something to look forward to, or at least one less thing to worry about.

I miss him so much, it's excruciating.

Haunted Cell Phone

I went to the mall today because my jeans are all frayed and look like sausage casings on me, despite the fact that I've lost a few pounds. I wasn't in a bad mood today, I was even trying to build myself up in my head. A stranger actually talked to me which is rare, since I think I look like a walking corpse and scare people away now. It wasn't anything interesting, he just asked if I'd had the food there before and to enjoy my meal. I noticed he was buying 2 meals, so he wasn't heading off to a table to sit there alone like me in the food court.

I feel self conscious now when I'm alone in public, so of course while I was eating I whipped out my phone so I wouldn't have to make eye contact with groups of people. I started chatting with a fellow widow friend, when the phone messed up. I was trying to type something but it was entering letters from other keys. I kept pressing the key until a word formed, and that word was 'sorry'. I thought it was weird, I didn't press the right keys to actually make the word sorry up. It kind of freaked me out, since I've had this phone since '06 and the ONLY other time it's had a problem was right after P died. That time I was trying to put his friend's name in the phone and it wouldn't let me type her name, just "2s" came up instead of K. (It's not a smartphone or anything, just a normal numerical keypad, like 2 = ABC, 3 = DEF etc...)

Anyway it wouldn't let me add any more letters, so I hit space and tried making another word after the 'sorry' but it was just the proper jibberish that I'd actually typed. Like prssp or something. I really wish I could say it was a message from P, but if it was then I'm sad that he feels sorry. It's not his fault he got cancer. I'm not religious, and even if I was, my desperate pleas and prayers in the shower when he was terminal never worked, so God is either unable to intervene, not real, or an @$$hole. I don't really think there has to be a God for an afterlife anyway, but P and I never bought any of that. I really want to find out we're so wrong, but you can't help what you believe. My crappy scientific brain is coming up with excuses already. Maybe it was the perspiration from my hand messing with the circuitry. Seriously? My last phone went through the wash (yeah.) and once it dried out everything worked but 1 key. My logical excuses seem almost as far fetched as my haunted-phone thoughts. Either way, I left my cold rice and cried in the public toilet after that.

Things I hate

A lot of things still really bug me. I don't mean like idiots and self centred a-holes. I mean new things since he got sick, and especially after he died. Things like:

- weddings
- babies
- happy couples
- unhappy couples
- couples doing anything together, like buying a house or whatever we were planning on doing
- sex scenes
- anyone or anything that annoyingly assumes everyone's life is exactly the same and will follow the same path (What do you mean you won't be a married house-mommy living in suburbia by the time you turn 30?)
- cancer and related topics like chemo/radiation, hair loss, or even survivors that are 'strong' or 'fighters' (As if P didn't fight hard enough or something.)
- even worse is specifically melanoma or any brain problems
- blindness
- seizures
- comas
- crusty orange tanned idiots
- bimbos/mimbos skimming the surface of life with no real cares or worries
- gluten free stuff or food allergies
- meds
- walkers
- pretty much anything health-related or hospital settings
- people that lived to be old (or just past their 30s)
- stuff from the 80s and 90s that reminds me of him, because I constantly imagine what he was like as a younger person before we met
- a billion things that he liked, his hobbies, our inside jokes, and stuff that used to make me happy and want to share with him (cucumbers, buttons, ice cream, oh my...)

All this is seriously unavoidable in real life. Even in fake life it always pops up. Usually I'll be watching a tv show and sense it coming. I talk to P out loud and say something like, "don't be cancer" or, "don't you dare propose to her/him". Of course it always is one of those two things. Then I have to whine to the air. "Seriously?! Are you f-ing serious?"

Some of it I can deal with now, but f*%& all that health stuff and happy oblivious couples. I miss being part of a happy couple. Cancer took both our lives, but I'm still suffering. Without a second thought, I would do absolutely Anything to have him back.

Wasting time

Sometimes I go overboard on the online time wasting and escape for a few days. A vacation... to my couch. Then I just sit and watch tv like a blob. For hours.

I saw the therapist on Tuesday, which is something I never look forward to because it forces me to think about all this crud. Plus, there's no escape from having to pass through the doctor's waiting room full of people with mystery infections. My hands shrivel like a prune from all the sanitizer, and my face is always ruined and stinging afterwards from trying to suppress tears and failing.

She asked what I do all day and sometimes I have no idea. I wonder if I should write it down, but I know hours can pass in an instant and they are full of nothingness. Maybe I make a tea, eat a banana, "check email" for 3 hours, scoop some litter, wander around Walmart, suddenly it's dark and I get to just sit and eat and watch tv... exciting stuff.

One thing I am doing lately is filling my head with knowledge. I get super into something, then I'm totally bored with it a few days or weeks later. I'm really trying hard to just go to the library when I feel like that, otherwise I'll research something and decide I NEED to buy a bunch of stuff, but later on realize I didn't want it as much as I thought. (Usually this occurs around the time when my credit card bill appears in the mailbox.) I still get the retail therapy high but instead I bring home some musty books to flip through and forget about for a few weeks. I hate that I'm going to the library again instead of doing stuff with P. I hate that this is progress for me, since the first few months I really didn't give a crap about anything and all my old interests crumbled.

Surreal Sundays

So far my day consists of cleaning the walls while the menu music for the Tudors loops in the background a billion times. Who the hell cleans the walls? Freaky Martha types, that's who. The widowed don't generally bother when it's only them rattling around the skeletons of their former happy home. Most of them have kids and purposes anyway.

These surreal moments are constantly occurring now. Today it's this old England castles-n-scandals music playing while I dramatically wipe cobwebs and skin cells off the door frame. Yesterday it was some typical happy 50s music at the supermarket, while I picked out loser bananas that had broken off so they would ripen (rot) at staggered times. Sometimes I feel like I'm in a Weeds episode.

I should definitely be more disturbed that I constantly compare real life to tv shows and my past life in an online game. I was pretty awesome back when I was a male wood elf ranger...

Chickening out

Last night I had a dream. I was in this group of people from my past, and everyone was assigned a character and we had to go down this weird cave practicing tasks. I was assigned to be a fairy. I even got a wand with a little star made of aluminum foil. I was SO pissed off about this. Everyone else had swords and got to be rogues and archers and I was supposed to practice my prancing and eventually twirling this stupid wand. Even in my dreams I'm forced to be an outcast doing something I hate. I was trying to rebel and learn how to slash and fly. Because of this I slept in until 5pm. It seemed better than waking up and dealing with the day and the sun.

I signed up for some Meetup groups a few weeks ago. Great. Now I'm one of those people that has to seek out adult playdates to fill their life, instead of enjoying doing anything or nothing with P. There's no way I will ever attend an event for singles, so I signed upfor some hiking groups. I found myself getting mad when they were all filled up by braggers showing off their beautiful husband and kids. Seriously! I want to tell them to enjoy their family alone and leave these planned activities for the lone wolves. I'm so bitter now. It sucks.

I finally got into one and almost went to my first hike but chickened out at 3am last night when my brown bottles reminded me there was no way I was waking up in 5 hours to put on my human mask and play nice.

Old Hobbies/New Hobbies

Old hobbies:

- nightly raids in Everquest
- hiking
- graphic design
- being psyched about my level of weird
- sniffing P's head
- getting more outrageous reactions from P to my baked bean dirt-cloud eating its way through the house like the smoke monster from Lost
- planning for vacations with P
- looking for a real job so we can buy a house

New Hobbies:

- looking for a loser job so I can continue flushing money down the rent-toilet
- hoarding canned soups
- 8(+) hour sessions of popthatzit.com/isitnormal.com/peopleofwalmart.com where I only get up once every hour to reheat my tea and pick out the cat hairs
- hanging out at the library past the age where it's required for high school assignments
- putting out the garbage/recycling once a week
- turning appliances on and going outside to watch the effects on the power meter
- falling asleep talking to P
- crying at Northern Exposure/the sad mop replaced by Swiffer/fictional tv characters with better lives than mine
- "becoming George"

The Husk

friend: people keep saying "hows she holding up" i wonder what the right answer is to that?

me: i wonder too

me: i just say i dunno ok, what can you say

me: its like when people on cash at the grocery store ask how i am i just say 'fine' then think in my head something f***ed up like 'oh i'm fine, fiance is dead and i ate doritos for breakfast at 5pm'.

friend: i just say "shes amazing" i dont know what thats supost to mean but its that or i tell them your soon to be the husk

...

It's been 8 months since P died, and yes, I am the husk.

Part of me wishes I had this neatly chronicled blog, describing all the terrible details and daily thoughts since he was diagnosed with cancer, in the hopes that I can go back later on and create a book or something useful.

But I don't. I'm in no shape to go through it all now. It will come out when it comes out, and if it doesn't... well is anyone really reading this anyway?

The quick(ish) version:

We met in an online game. He moved across the world to be with me in 2005. It was sheer bliss. We thought about visiting Australia/NZ for Christmas or being responsible and buying a house. That all got squashed.

Summer '08 he was a bit tired. It was celiac disease. It was also cancer—stage IV metastatic melanoma. They cut it out. He was recovering nicely. In November we had a celebration when he was declared cancer free, and the next day he was vomiting. It was in his spinal fluid and thus beginning it's attack on the lining of his brain. Whole brain radiation and chemo in December. He did surprisingly well, but still went blind as it coated his optic nerve.

(I think about those times a lot... his text messages from the hospital filling with typos, a blade of the ceiling fan that he can't see, the colours on the Rubick's cube are all becoming the same.)

He came home. Time passed in spurts of the terrifying, the beautiful, the frantic, filled with long stretches of the depressing. Of listening to audio books. Of optimism out loud, but the stuff of nightmares lurking in both our heads. Of being sleepy because it was always dark.

We bought a cat. Actually she picked him out, so we had to have her.

Considering the state his body was in, he managed a pretty awesome proposal in April. We planned our wedding, hoping to at least be given the chance to have this one last happy thing. Denied. By the end of May his cancer figured out how to beat the chemo and started spreading again. Pressure in his poor head.

His last 6 weeks were absolute hell.

They started off with fixing his headaches, thinking he would be home in a week or so. With mildly amusing hallucinations and surreal nights addressing wedding invitations on the empty bed next to him. They ended in a vegetative state, stopping his fluids, watching his final seizure as his face turned yellow, gasping for breath, confused and scared, no pulse, a few more slow gasps. And silence as I finally accepted that I'd failed.

2009 was the worst year of my life. Nobody should have to say the year they were proposed to, and supposed to get married in was the worst year of their lives.

2010 isn't exactly a picnic. Last year I had hope. As unfounded as it was, I had it. He was there. Now he's not and never will be. That makes this year worse in a way.

And here I am again. Time passing with no purpose.
Here I am, the husk.