Some zombies still have heartbeats

Any time I was leaving to go somewhere - even just a run to the local inconvenience store - Doug would walk me to the door and give me a hug and a kiss goodbye; when I got back, he'd greet me at the door with a hug and a kiss. I did the same for him; it was one of the many little rituals that we had. It wasn't like we came to some sort of agreement to do that - leave each exit and greet each entrance with a hug and a kiss - it just happened. I think part of it was simply that we didn't like being apart, so the walk to the door and the greeting at the door was our way of getting a few precious extra seconds together. That little thing always made me feel so special and so loved. I hope it did the same for him.

Nobody comes or goes now, though, except for me when I take Kellogg out. And nobody's greeting me at the door except for Prowler. But he's only doing it because he's hoping he'll get an opportunity to escape. That used to be Marmalade's thing, but the increasingly frail 18-year-old cat is the alpha, and so it's his thing now.

I bought this house, all on my own, after I left Thing Two. And I loved it so much - yeah, the bathrooms are too small, and the kitchen is awful. But the neighborhood, and the living room, and the screened-in patio, and the yard... it was my own little slice of heaven.

Doug didn't love this house. He didn't hate it or anything, but it was too small for the two of us plus all our furniture, not to mention three cats and a dog. It was never meant to be our permanent residence, so we made it work for the short-term. Didn't really matter all that much anyway - home was wherever we were together.

Now, though, this house is my prison. I can't leave, not that there's anywhere to go anyway, and not that I'm exactly motivated to go anywhere. The screens on the patio all need to be replaced - I can't even use it right now because critters keep getting in. The yard is overgrown with weeds that I have neither the energy nor the motivation to remove. All the shrubs need to be trimmed as well, but... well, there's that motivation problem again. There are repairs that need to be made, inside and out, but none of those is happening either.

Inside is just as much of a mess, because I can't get my ass in gear to do anything but miss my husband. And the thing is, I don't even care. My house's condition and my yard's condition match my own: a total wreck, falling apart on the outside and a cluttered, dirty mess on the inside, ready to collapse under its own weight. And I don't care about that, either.

I'm back to being unable to eat. Don't care.

I've started biting my nails again - a habit I finally ended in my early twenties, but it's back with a vengeance. Don't care.

I haven't been in the same physical space as another human being in so long that I don't even remember what it's like. I'm more disconnected from everyone else every day. I don't even want to talk to anyone at this point, because there's really nothing to say and there's really nothing I want to hear. And you guessed it: I don't care about any of it.

I know I'm getting worse. I can feel myself falling apart bit by bit, day by day. I can barely muster a giggle or even a hint of a smile for even the funniest jokes. My entire consciousness seems able to hold one thought only: I can't do this without Doug. And I - who used to take the word "can't" as a personal challenge - don't care about that either. The fact that I've accepted that I can't make it without him makes perfect sense. OF COURSE I can't do this without Doug; I was never SUPPOSED to do it without Doug.

Slept four-and-a-half hours last night (well, this morning: from 5:30 to 10:00). No dreams. Again. I've been begging Doug for 45 days and 44 nights to come to me in my dreams to no avail; I think it's safe to say that he's not listening. Or he hears me, but he just doesn't WANT to visit me. And that? That's the ONE thing I DO care about. I care about it so desperately that I stay awake all night asking him and asking him to PLEASE come to me.

But what I care about doesn't matter anymore. And I suppose that makes sense too: if the fates were cruel enough to take Doug from me, why would they give me the comfort of hearing from him? No, better to let me be and watch me suffer as I slowly transform from a whole, happy, vibrant woman into... I don't even know what I'm transforming into. I can tell you it's definitely not a "caterpillar into a beautiful butterfly" situation, that's for sure. Maybe it's not so much that I'm transforming as it is that I'm devolving. I don't know.

The only things I do know with any certainty are that I'm not me anymore, that I miss Doug so fucking much that I can't stand it, and I can't do it without him. Still not going to kill myself, but it's clear that actually living isn't going to happen either.

And now that I put it that way, I realize that binge-watching The Walking Dead really does make perfect sense, because the walking dead is exactly what I am.