Seven months

I cannot express how much I HATE that we were married on the 17th of the month and Doug died on the 20th of the month; those days are forever entwined. Just three days ago marked 11 months since our wedding; today marks seven months since his death. Soon, he'll be gone twice as long as we were married; not long after that, thrice as long... our marriage was so brief that the milestones and markers are flying by at breakneck speed, with each one taking me further away from the love that made my life worthwhile - the love I now can't give to anyone; the love I now can't get from anyone.

I've tried to keep busy so far today (finished my grocery list for my trip, set up the recurring Zoom meeting for the book club), and I still have to do today's designated housework (the entryway - it's too small to be a foyer - and hallway). Then, I have some paperwork to do (yay, tax season!), and a Titans game to try and watch.

I seem to have settled into a steady state of quiet despair, punctuated by bursts of anguish so excruciating they take my breath away. I'm sure everyone else would see this as progress, but I find it to be quite the opposite, and very unsettling: hysteria, however overwhelming, is temporary, but steady-state despair may not be. It's the difference between the in-the-moment "I don't want to live anymore" and a calm, rational analysis that I'm stuck in a life that I'm pretty certain no one would want, and I'm absolutely certain that I don't want it. That feels much more permanent, and much more dangerous a path to tread.

Planning this trip truly feels like just going through the motions - which, to be fair, is how I feel most of the time anyway. And I'm afraid of what's going to happen if this trip doesn't provide some kind of breakthrough, because I'm all out of ideas beyond that (Brooke's and Grace the grief counselor's suggestion to set up an online dating profile is still on the table, but I'm still very much on the fence about that).

Sure, I could take the position that this trip is going to get me on the right track, dammit, and I won't brook any thoughts to the contrary. But for one thing, that's not me; for another, even if I were an optimist by nature, that's a foolish stance to take, because what if it's wrong? So yeah, I'm concerned. If the one thing that's my last-ditch effort to find a reason to keep going fails, then what? So I try to put that thought out of my mind every time it forces its way to the forefront. I'm not often successful, but I try.

To say that I miss Doug is such an understatement that it doesn't even scratch the surface. Imagine losing your dominant hand - it would change everything. Imagine losing your ability to communicate, because that's in large part how grief feels (because you keep trying to share your experience, but nobody really understands it). Imagine everything in your entire world being upended, and the one person you count on to get through life is gone too. It's not as simple as I miss Doug; it's more that I don't even feel real without him.

Sigh... enough ruminating. I have housework to do, and paperwork to do, and a book to start reading, and a football game to watch. I have motions to go through, and so go through them I will.