This is how I feel..

This is how I feel.
Finally, someone says it better than I ever could. Excerpts from a book I'm reading. Safe Passage.


We struggled so hard to be together, and now we are apart once more. I can't imagine starting over with someone else. You were my destination.

A kaleidoscope of feeligns has ensnared me. Denial, anger, guilt, despair, acceptance. One does not end for another to begin, rather the emotions tumble about and crash together just beyond control, and without regards for my wounded, weeping heart.

I am waiting to become disentangled. I want to seperate one color from another, so that I might see more clearly what assaults me. I want to address the fullness of my tears one feeling at a time.


What ever happened to happily ever after? As it turns out, that was the cruelest part of the fairy tale.





You are my enemy; my rage is undending. I know it is unhealthy. But I can't stop wanting to find you and spend days telling you what you took away from me. I would pummel you with the truth until you wept. And then I would open up and drench you with the rest of my feelings, until you were drowning in regret. Just when you were screaming for air, I would let you go. I would watch you crawl away. If I have to live in the aftermath of what you have done, so must you.




The grief I feel for you is large and loud, and threatening to burst out of me and paint everything the colors of who we were. Know that I would do that for you, make posters and take out ads telling everyone about our love. Give me a sign beloved, and I'll do that.




I am imprisoned in a cell of loneliness. There is no way out, except for the unexpected touch of others. Their affection will guide me down the passageway to my freedom. Their encouragement will illuminate the way.




I lie awake at night, tortured by the barrage of questions that pick at my flesh like tiny birds with sharp beaks: Why me? Why now? What have I done to deserve this? What could I have done to prevent this cruel parting? Unanswerable questions. All I can do is let them flow through me, rather than pick raw my tender skin. Oh yes, here they are again, my nightly visitors.





I watch others from a distance moving effortlessly in the circle of family and I am angry that their lives still seem to be intact. I rage at the injustice of death, that anything can be undisturbed, that anyone can go on normally in the face of this event. How is it that others haven't noticed that nothing will ever be the same again? I must be the only one who understands this small, yet eternal change.



When I find myself panicking, its usually because I've let my mind wander off to the future. Where will I be next year, how will I feel in two years, how will I survive Christmas [I've often thought about just sleeping through the day] and birthdays? An endless procession of empty days, weeks, months, begin to line up before me like tombstones waiting to be inscribed with memories never made. All I can do is bring myself back to today, to tomorrow maybe, and remember that the future is unknowable and my place in it is yet unborn.


Death has seperated us, but not completely. We have not parted company forever. I am only living away from you for awhile.


The depth of my grief is a constant with the breadth of my love. I would never sacrifice one to avoid the pain of the other.


It is the small things that bring me to an incredible sorrow. I come across a photo in a drawer, and I have to step back in order to avoid being engulfed by your absense. Confronted with the problem of your clothes in the closet, I know that taking them away will not be possible without dying once more. The message is unmistakable: I must give myself good time, because the little things are not little at all.




When we are struggling through the night, falling prey to the beasts of guilt and regret, drowning in a river of tears, finally succumbing to exhaustion, we cannot be expected to believe in the beauty of the coming dawn. Somewhere in our past, we knew morning to be night's faithful follower, but for now, what understanding will have to force its way through the menacing darkness and back to us again.



Sometimes, thinking of death, feelings of panic would press into my awareness and send me shuddering into myself. But I am calmer now about dying; perhaps I will never be that afraid again. After all, I watched you go away with death and I know that you are alright. I will also go away, and I, too, will be alright.
I am fighting the temptation to plot revenge. From within my torment, a very loud voice drowns out what is left of my humanity: "Even the score!" Frantically, I argue. Retribution will not bring you back, I say. What I choose to do in your memory will be your legacy and my reason to go on. Beneath the din, another, softer voice - perhaps my old self - quietly states my position. ...In your name, I want to live to celebrate the last act of inhumanity.


There is someone inside of us who knows exactly what to do. Each of us possesses a natural wisdom that will guide us during the most difficult of times. By turning inward we will find our way through.


We know ourselves by the stories we tell. Losing you has dismantled my storyline and shaken my plot; the tale I tell about who I am and where I am going doesn't make sense anymore. I want to desperately find other words that will imagine my life anew. I just don't know where and how that story will begin.


Getting through the day is like walking through a mine field of deadly moments of recollection.Just when I have slipped beneath the surface of remembering, drawn there by the benevolent distractions of daily life, the grim new reality suddenly explodes around me, reminding me that everything is terribly, permanently different. And I must absorb the same first brutal shock, the same descending horror, over and over again. I am deceived by those instances of forgetfulness, yet I am obviously not ready to live every moment with the inalterable truth.

[That is every single day.. and it happens at the worst possible moments.. sitting at work, and all of a sudden it hits me all over again and I see Richard laying there on the table with the tubes all over him, in his mouth and.. remembering the doctor bluntly telling me that he'd been dead for hours... every day.. several times a day and it's terrible.]

Sleeping, which used to relieve the fullness of the day, has become just another difficult task. I first avoid my bed, knowing that if I stop moving, memories will sneak into my fading consciousness and force a sob into my throat. Other nights I lay awake for hours - feeling nothing, but still unable to sleep. Or I wake in the predawn darkness, hoping desperately that the clock has moved toward the morning. I was not prepared for sleep to be an enemy. What I need now is a friend, and a way to rest my weary spirit.

I am disoriented by death. I do not know where I have been or where I am going. The familiar landmarks are out of view, coldly covered by deaths icy grip. My confusion has atleast, demanded that I cease moving. Standing still will restore my sense of direction, and what remains of my inner fire will warm the way toward healing.

If only I could have spoken to hiim before he chose to end a life. It would only have taken a few minutes to tell him about us, to describe the ways we all love each other, to paint a picture of our happinness and our innocence. I would have changed his mind. He would have understood that he deserved to live. I would have looked into his eyes and made him see himself in mine, and he would have decided differently.


I was asked today how I keep going when I have lost my best friend and the person I have loved so much in this lifetime. I keep going because I have to. I have to for the people who love me, if I gave up then that would be tragic to not have only lost him but me too. He wouldn't want that. I have to pretend I'm okay. I have to put a smile on my face and whenever someone asks how I'm doing I have to say I'm fine, I'm not.. but how would you feel if everytime you asked the s ame person how they were doing and they said, terrible, horrible.. not okay, I'm not fine.. You wouldn't care to have anything to do with that person because of all the negativitiy. I don't want people to pity me, I don't want people to walk away from me because of my loss and not knowing how to deal with it. I'm not okay, but in time I think I will get used to the pain and will have found a way to keep going on with my life even though right now I don't know how to. I was told that eventually you learn how to deal with the pain. I was told that my life will never return to normal, because he was my normal.. it was a crazy normal, but it was my normal. Now that he's gone I'll have to find a new normal. A wise old lady told me that and I believe it.