Proof of Life

I got angry with Brad once.

It was that one time.

I was tired, sick, stressed and I came home from work to spill out a problem I just could not find the other side of.

"Well Dwan, you're just going to have to figure it out."

And I exploded.

I told him I shouldn't have to figure it out, that I felt like I have had to figure things out on my own for my entire life and I have always just had to find my own way, that now there were two of us and I just really needed help and for once I did not want to figure it out on my own.

He stood there, he listened.

And when I had expelled everything inside of me I cried.

He stepped forward, gave me one of his big hugs and said, "You're right. Lets figure it out."

And we did.

When we had figured it out he kissed me ever so gently and said, "I've always been proud of how you've always figured things out."

But we worked like a well-oiled machine.

Like everything we did, we talked it through and found the way to the other side.

It's why we worked.

We worked together.

And finally I did not have to figure things out on my own.

Then it was April 3rd.

The world came crashing down, the sun exploded, the stars ate themselves and the moon descended into nothing.

Just black.

And once again I found myself sitting, defeated, having to figure it out.

How can this happen?

How can life just go on now without him in it?

Doesn't the world know that it ended?

Why is it still turning and why is everyone just going on with life when life has ceased to exist?

How can anything go forward without him?

We had so many plans.

It was going to be a big week.

We were putting in an offer on that yellow house on Wells Crescent with the hot tub and pool, the big back deck where he could sun and I could drink wine in the hot tub while he told me how gross hot tubs are and I flicked water at him to tell him to just get in.

I can even hear him laugh when I would do things like that.

"You're bathing in your own filth, Dwan."

"But it feels so good though!"

We were going to get that bedroom set - I had finally given in to splurging on the expensive one.

I never splurged.

I had never owned new furniture.

But this was ours and new and everything was new even though we weren't new.

It's funny how every day those butterflies made it feel like it was all still new, though.

And he was going to get that big print that was hanging over the bedroom set when we looked at it because it was teal, orange and had a guitar.

It matched.

Like us.

And then I was in the darkness and having to figure it out.

I cried. I screamed. I bruised my already battered hand and was so angry.

I could no longer figure it out on my own because he was a part of me and now that entire part of my whole self was gone.

How?

Today I turned the key.

I stepped inside.

It's not our home, the yellow house on Wells Crescent, it's one of his best friend's grandparents' house from way back when he was little and I was little in a Cove 3.5 hours away and didn't know that other part of me yet existed.

Somehow I figured it out.

And though I know I'll never be whole again, I know I have no choice but to figure it out, even when I am, as my counselor said today, expelling energy I don't have because I keep push-push-pushing and keep trying to make an engine run when it is out of gas.

I figured it out, Brad.

It's not going to be easy, but I figured this part out.

I just hope you're still proud.

It's Gonna Rain All Day

It feels like it is raining even when the sun shines.

I saw a quote today:

“There are people whose death leaves you with an ache of grief. A slight sting. And then there are people whose death stops time. Deaths that leave the sky murky all day long because even the sun is grieving.” 

And I felt that.

He was my sunshine.

How he loved sunny days and I would come home to all of the windows and doors open, likely Oasis blaring from the Bose speaker and Brad dancing around the kitchen with a rare beer exclaiming how damn good it was to be alive.

I don't think anything will ever feel alive again.

My house is supposed to close on the 20th.

I'm packing.

Slowly.

His bodywash and shaving cream in a bag because I can't bare for the bathroom to not smell like it.

That expensive shampoo he didn't need but insisted on using is there too.

His raincoat is being packed because mine was in the car -

Too much blood so it had to be thrown away.

Today was a work day followed by 2.5 hours of counseling.

And I always leave there feeling worse than when I went in.

Wounds ripped open like a premature bandaid being torn away.

My heart hurts, figuratively and literally.

I keep feeling the pain and thinking it is going to get bigger until I realize I don't think that's possible.

Where do I pack the sympathy cards?

Where is his Hurley hat?

I have the shirt he wore on our first lunch date.

He was thinking of throwing that one out but I wouldn't let him.

White with navy flowers and it was very Brad.

"Hi there, how are you?"

Tonight I packed the cookbooks I bought at the Beagle Paws auction because I loved cooking for us.

I never got to open them.

All of this is so overwhelming and every night I think nothing can possibly hurt worse than today did but every morning I wake up and realize everything hurts deeper than it did the day before.

How?

How can anything possibly hurt more than yesterday did?

But it does.

Staring up at that bank on Pitts as I stop at the lights on my way home.

Knowing he died there alone.

I promised he would never be alone.

But he was.

I couldn't keep that promise.

There is no longer sunshine, no matter what the forecast says.

Everything is cold.

And it will never, ever stop raining.

"It's gonna rain all day,
It's gonna rain all day,
With the life that I have made here
All covered up in gray.

It's gonna rain all day..."

Goddamn Lonely Love

I remember when Brad and I had first met.

One night he looked at me and said, "I'm hard to love."

I told him I had been told the same.

So he laid himself bare with me.

Past.

Victories.

Mistakes.

Everything he felt he was.

Everything he regretted.

Bare bones.

Those beautiful, bare bones.

"I don't know why I feel I can push my boundaries with you.

You need to know it all."

So he told me.

And I told him.

I told him of my stubbornness.

How I knew what I wanted in life.

How everything has always been a battle but no matter what it took I would dig in and refuse to let go.

I'm rough.

And tumble.

While my friends are talking skin care routines I joke that mine consists of dipping my face underwater when I wash my hair.

I play hockey.

I smoke when I drink.

I love wine on the weekends (though no more...sleeping pills make me steer clear of that now).

How most of my best friends are guys.

There is always dirt under my fingernails.

I chew them.

I swear a lot.

I'll fight you when a Pens game is on.

I am fiercely loyal to those I love.

Though those people are few and far between.

I rarely trust.

I don't sleep.

And for so long I've felt so broken.

I had felt so broken that I could not love before.

I never could find the way to do it.

Nothing ever felt right though I went through the motions.

My heart has always been guarded by concrete walls and I could never figure out why everyone seemed capable of love but I could never feel that way.

Broken.

Like there were no parts of me that were not broken in my body and mind and nothing fit together to make a complete human capable of love.

And he understood it.

In him I found the part that brought all of those broken pieces into one complete whole and finally, just finally, the walls came down.

We never fought.

Don't get me wrong, we had disagreements.

But those resulted in one of us saying we needed to talk and when we did we laid out what was bothering us and asked how we could make a plan to fix it.

And we did.

There was nothing that could not be fixed.

We could ask if the other needed space.

We could ask if the other needed to talk.

We could ask if the other simply needed a long hug that would help the stresses of our busy week go away.

On the first night we spent together that's what he did.

We laid our wings on the table and he reached out for a long hug.

And we stayed there until everything melded together and was whole again.

We had both paid our dues and now it was time to know what it was like to find happiness and contentment.

We found it easily.

Not once did he ever say there was a single thing I needed to change.

For once, this person who wanted me in his life didn't want to change one single thing about me.

It was never about change, it was how we fit together and made it all work.

For the first time in my life I could be happy being me and never once did I feel inadequate, wrong or broken.

And every mistake he told me he made only made him the person he was and that was who I wanted.

We fit.

I'm really struggling with missing that piece.

The one that completed me and made me feel whole, loved, appreciated and like there wasn't a single thing wrong with me after all.

My broken brain, my broken spirit, all of the things I had always told were not who a woman should be - he made me feel like every one of those pieces was loved.

It's so lonely without him.

I am missing my glue.

My soul.

My heart.

And for those years, though fleeting, I had finally known who I was and was comfortable in that skin.

Now I don't know who I am anymore.

I'm a mess.

I put one foot in front of the other but nothing goes forward.

Everything is stuck.

And I miss that feeling of acceptance and love.

He may have laid all of those past mistakes on the table and he may have also felt broken and hard to love.

But loving him was the easiest thing I have ever had to do.