February 28 2020

12:56 AM

Just got drunk-dialed by a former friend (now blocked, and she'd BEST not show her face on Saturday) who told me I need to stay off Facebook with my whining and crying and feeling sorry for myself.

I'm one week out from my life ending, and I'm already being told to get over it.

Gee, it's just like I predicted. But, y'know, message received. I'll keep my torment to myself. Because if ONE person is thinking I'm just being an attention whore, she's probably not alone.

8:04 AM

Slept about five hours, which is the most I've gotten since the six hours I slept right after my up-39-hours-straight marathon right after Doug died.

Don't feel even a LITTLE rested.

No dreams.

I want to write about how I'm feeling (as if y'all haven't been subjected to it 24/7 for the past eight days), but after last night's late-night phone call, I'm now feeling so self-conscious I don't know if I can. Instead of being able to just pour it all out, now I'm overthinking everything I want to say.

I'm even second-guessing the eulogy I wrote: is it too long? Is it too indulgent? Is it really about telling everyone exactly who Doug was, and why this is such an enormous loss - not just to me, but for everyone? Or am I making it all about me and being self-indulgent?

The truth is that, one of the many things that Doug and I had in common is a tendency to think that, deep down, people often put up with us rather than really like us. On the BEST of days, that's a nagging little voice in the back of my head, and I can usually shove it down and ignore it.

These are not, as you've probably noticed, the best of days.

3:55 PM

Peggy picked me up and brought me to the hotel where they're staying: there's lots of room to work on the display boards for tomorrow, and it gets me out of our house. Being there without you is hard. Being ANYWHERE without you is hard, but it's the worst there.

Pulling into the hotel parking lot, I had a flashback of pulling into the parking lot of our hotel in San Jose on our way to Hawaii to get married, and for a minute I couldn't breathe. Again. That happens to me a lot lately.

I finally have the means to travel, but how can I? I used to love traveling alone, but traveling with you wrecked that for me, in the best possible way.

Peggy suggested taking my great-niece, Emma, to NYC (since she's probably gonna end up on Broadway, why not spend a weekend on the town, right?), but even that sounds unappealing.

How can I enjoy a trip like that without you? It was supposed to be with you; it's ALL supposed to be with you.

Baby, I miss you so much.

11:55 PM

Home from a family dinner (most of Doug's side and pretty much all of mine) at Persis Biryani in Mt Juliet. Sadly, the Allen clan can't get here from Knoxville until tomorrow.

We had such a good time, drinking (I had two beers!), telling stories about Doug, and eating. I ate an entire samosa AND several pieces of gobi cauliflower, which tells me I CAN eat - provided I'm with a big group of people who can distract me from the nightmare in which I'm currently living. Not something I can do every day, but maybe this means I can actually get a meal(ish) once a week or so.

It was delightful, despite the not-infrequent moments when I was reminded how much Doug would have loved it, which of course sent me spiraling again.

My son - designated driver for the evening - brought me home, and now I'm right back where I've been most every minute since last Thursday: sad, scared, lonely, and wishing this were all a TERRIBLE dream, and I'll wake up tomorrow wrapped in the arms of the man I love so much.

Distractions are... nice, I suppose. But, at the end of the day, I still come home alone. And I sleep on the sofa recliner, in the spot where he sat, because I can't bear the thought of sleeping in our bed. Not without him.

I suppose you could say this is progress. But is it, really? Do I really have a life, if that life is about distracting myself from the fact that he's gone, and I'm here without him, and every minute of every day and every night that I'm NOT distracted is going to be so damn lonely?

I've always embraced change, but this is too much. How am I supposed to embrace THIS change, when it means I spend my every solitary minute wishing I could be with him?

It was a lovely evening. And not gonna lie - I enjoyed myself, to a point. But at a fundamental level, I'm still in a black hole of misery. NO distraction is enough to make it worth it to be here without him. For his sake, because I know he'd want me to be happy, I wish it could be enough. But it's not.

Tomorrow, I have to say goodbye to Doug. I don't know how I'm going to do that, because it wasn't supposed to be this way. But I'm going to get through tomorrow, because this is my gift - our family's gift - to Doug. It's our last opportunity to show him how much we love him.

But after that? Man, if I learned anything from losing my mother, it's that this is only the beginning. When Mom died, the worst pain didn't hit for several months. And by then, most everyone will have moved on.

I CAN'T move on.