companionship

i get these moments.  they are coming less and less frequently of course, but they still come.  tonight is friday night.  for those of you who are unaware, friday night is a couple's night.  it's a bottle of red, take out and let's talk about our feelings kind of night.

the kids went hard today, playing and running around and in turn, i put in a good amount of effort at bedtime as they were both overtired and doing their just absolute favorite game which is trading off screaming.  all of a sudden, like magic, they were both out by 7:23.  in my old life, this would have me running around, celebrating in sweats, jim and i high-fiving at our good fortune and amount of TV we could cram in together, cuddled on the couch.

tonight i just stood there, looking at the numbers on my stove.  the stark realization that my life-sharer was absent, and would forever be absent.



sometimes i wonder if i'm really healing or just getting better at blocking it out.  mentally, most of the time i just don't go there.  the horror that i lived for twelve days is too much.  i don't know what other victims do, sometimes i think about it, people who live through torture or imprisonment and survived.  do they just block it out?  can you heal from it?  a big part of me thinks that i won't ever heal on this earth.  if you love, some wounds just cut too deeply to ever close.

if you got to the top, you gotta go to the bottom.


the crazy thing is, most days (i mean some not the case) but most days i am strong enough to say i would do it over again, to say i would choose him over again.  i remember taking a walk with him one evening and telling him that almost every good thing in my life had resulted from meeting him.  never in my life have i felt more complete love than when i was with him, and never ever have i loved someone so fully and completely.  what we had is so difficult to put into words, even as a self-proclaimed writer, i fail.  i can't describe to you the comfort, the safety, the security that being with him provided me.  i mean the man worked two minutes away and came home to see us on lunch for fuck's sake.

it's so weird to me that when elly and jim died some people chose to immediately bring up "well, at least you have the other two" or "don't worry you're young, you'll get married again" - that one i hear a lot.  it's not that i don't want to get married again or even that i can't see myself getting married again.  it's just - to cheapen what jim and i treasured and honed and worked at for six years to a passing fling of "it will find you again" is insane to me.  not to mention by the way folks, just got burned by love pretty badly, not really looking to just jump back into a relationship.

i know though, that people mean well, that most are probably just trying to instill hope and vibrancy into my life.  i also know that as much as i talk, which is a lot, i am, at the end of the day, the only person in my own head, just like jim was the only person in his.  so, on an existential level, isn't this human experience we share bizarre?  so many connected points and yet still such isolation exists.


jim,
i missed you tonight love.  we would have had fun, i think- talking about the end of summer, getting excited for the vacation we had planned with the three kids next week, worrying about how they were all going to do in the car for a 12 hour road trip.  i would have probably been talking your ear off about how excited i was to show you hilton head and what new thing addy and lane and elly had done that day.  we would have talked about sending addy off to preschool in a couple weeks and how we couldn't believe that day had come already.  you might've convinced me to join you for a cigar instead of the couch since it was such a nice night and we would have relaxed together on our driveway.  you rubbing your temples, shaking the stress of your week off as you switched into family mode.  me being my usual annoying self full of energy and zeal!

i miss the simple things with you love, mostly just the sheer companionship of you.  i wish you were here babe.  i'm pretty sure you wouldn't even recognize me these days.  this girl that gives zero fucks and is doing it all on her own and definitely has shorter hair than you ever knew her with.  or maybe if you saw me today you would just grab me and hug me and say "i knew you could do it"