I was an immature child when I married Steve; I grew up being his wife and the mother to our kids. He was exactly what I need and everything I wanted, which has made letting him go an almost impossible task. Once you have what we had, losing it is a pain that I really couldn't see ever getting any better. There have been so many days that I was disappointed when I woke up alive. I knew my kids needed me, but they needed him too and most of the time it felt like I needed to be where he was more than anyone needed the shell of what I had become. I don't really know when it happened, but somewhere along the way, I woke up and I was o.k. with being alive and then one day I woke up and I was happy to be alive. It takes a while to get there and to be completely honest there are relapse days, but not near as many as there used to be.
I can talk about Steve and our life without crying all the time, which is good. Unfortunately, now that I have let myself heal from some of the pain, Steve seems more distant than he was, but I'm pretty sure that is how it goes.
I finally went to the grave site today...
Today has been horrible, I woke up with the feeling that I just needed to stay in bed all day. Life is extremely stressful right now. It's finals time and I'm preparing my house to sell, so we can move. Everyone told me to wait one to two years before I made any huge decisions. It's been two years and I still want to move out of this house. There are some things that are just too hard. Some places I still have a tough time going to. It is only because we had such good times in those places, I can't go back there without experiencing an overwhelming about of sadness. So, I do my best to avoid them. I look at this house and in almost every room of this house we made a huge change. We remodeled so much of it together and it's hard to look at it every day.
Anyway, back to today. I finally got up and studied for my Wills, Trusts, and Estates exam and it just felt wrong. This is supposed to be my 20 year anniversary and I'm trying to study, but I can't concentrate because today was supposed to be so different. So, I went to the grave. I've been avoiding that place for 27 months. I've tried to imagine me going and it never works out good in my head. People have encouraged me to go thinking it will help somehow.
I really don't know if it helped or hurt or did anything for me. Knowing that everything we were, everything we had, is in a box in the ground with a headstone on it doesn't make me feel any better. But, I already knew that anyway, so it really didn't make it any worse. Now, I just have a mental picture of the space where my husband and my former life are buried. The source of pain comes from knowing what I lost, not from knowing where it is. I know where he is and I know he is happy, even without me. That box in the ground only holds the body he wore, but it represents so much more for me; 18 years of life and love and memories and becoming everything we were together is also in that box in the ground.A while ago, I came to the point of being able to keep moving instead of standing still because I finally understood that he is still living (in heaven, I'm not crazy) and he's happy with where he is. He still experiences joy and happiness, he doesn't need me anymore. The grief still exists and I will always love him and miss him; I will always wonder why. I've let myself grieve his death and I've let myself grieve the loss of who I was and who we were. Going to the grave seemed like the right thing to do on what should have been our 20 year anniversary. I also wanted to know if I would experience some unexpected feeling that I hadn't allowed myself to feel yet; I didn't. I felt the same things I have felt for 27 months: anger, sadness, pain, and regret. Nothing can be done about the anger, sadness and pain, they just have to come and go as they will, but I have learned a lot from the regret. I can use the regret to make me a better person from here on out.
Regret is a powerful teacher
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