I dreamt that a former partner was getting a tattoo. I was trying to befriend him while he was under the needle. I felt like I needed the security and familiarity of him in my life, but he didn’t want to be friends.
I wanted to know why. At which point he whispered to me: You broke your own heart. And I realized, yes, I did.
On this date, the streets are always full of people. It is the Catalan independence day, and what used to be celebrated is now full of anger and hope and demonstrations.
On this date, terrorists took down the World Trade Centers in my country and killed 3000 innocent people.
On this date, I count the age you would have been. Today is your birthday. I never thought I could miss someone so desperately and for so long like I miss you. I wonder what we would be doing, how we would be together, where our love could have gone.
I think about how I would have celebrated you. Until I can’t anymore.
“I am going to break this guy’s heart,” I thought to myself. It was our fourth date, and I knew he was a confident person but this evening I could see I made him visibly nervous. He stood in my doorway with a bottle of wine. We had plans to meet for the evening, but that was it. And here he was, visibly trembling in my doorway.
I thought if I made anyone that nervous, there must be something weak in them, something I eventually would find too needy about them, too desperate. These of course were my own projections about things I dislike about myself. But I thought they were indications that I was stepping into something I knew, that I was in control, that I could rationally decide when to leave, as I thought I would if I were to continue.
How very wrong I was. That step tripped me. I fell so hard and I didn’t know if it was the ground or the sky hitting me. I suffered his absences. I split and blazed in his presence. I laughed and cried tears of euphoria with him, for him, because of him. I lived my life in a state of presence I’d never been able to manage before. I never wanted any of our moments together to end. “Ah, THIS is it,” I thought to myself. “This is what it is to love and be loved completely.”
I was safe and I was fully alive for the first time. And maybe the last time.
I couldn’t bring myself to write on the anniversary of his death 2 1/2 months ago.The notion that I will never see him again is too big. I faced it and felt it so deeply for so long, nearly ten months, until I could not embrace so much sorrow any longer. I had been going to every and all form of therapy and support groups, doing meditation, self care, acupuncture, spiritual practices, searching for meaning…that’s what I thought I was supposed to do. That’s what I didn’t do last time. That’s what I thought would help. But nothing ever did, ever does. I got angry and quit all of it.
I got sick of embracing a soul crushing pain that never lessened. Sick of feeling like I was under water, moving slower than the world, unable to make sense of the frenzy of life going on around me. Sick of not knowing who I was anymore.
And I think I very nearly went down the rabbit hole; I came very close to losing my mind. I was certainly on the brink of something dark and frightening and I am not sure what it was. Maybe I was on the edge of enlightenment or maybe I was going to break. Whatever, wherever I was, I believed it led to a place I wouldn’t come back from, so I stepped back. I put my attentions on distractions and all the bullshit you do when you don’t know how to manage your feelings. Maybe someday I will regret this. Or maybe I will celebrate this. Who knows.
For his anniversary I spent the weekend with his family up in the mountains. We went to the ridge where we spread his ashes a year ago. It was beautiful and it sucked. Beautiful because the love we share for him brought us together, his sweet memories reside in all of us. It sucked for obvious reasons.
I thought pages and pages would pour out of me on his anniversary, but I couldn’t face it. Maybe I won’t ever again, I have no idea. I effectively turned off a switch and it could very well come back to bite me very hard later. Or maybe not, maybe I’m through something. But I’m not over anything. I’m trying to rebuild my life again, but this weight is always with me. I miss him and the future I lost with him so goddamn much.
I’ll never get over my losses, nor should I, nor should anyone. I can heal, I can rebuild myself, but I will never be the same. I shouldn’t be and I don’t want to be.
I can’t believe I am even writing this, but I must get it off my chest.
There is a difference. A big, hulking, overwhelming, devastating, sickening difference between ending a relationship and a partner dying. Divorce, separation is a choice. It happens typically because love is lost or not strong enough to get through problems or the changes/growth of one partner.
But with death, the love was there and in many circumstances, it was still growing and developing. My relationship was amazing. I had no doubt in my mind we would be inseparable until old age .
I am posting this because there are an unbelievable number of people who believe they understand what I am going through. They do not. They cannot. I’ve heard from many, many people who have been through both the death of a spouse and a divorce, and all of them_every single one__say that divorce is MUCH easier.
What’s more, there are a handful of folks who have dared to posit to my face that I am LUCKY that my partner died. LUCKY – because he did not leave me. The fuck??? This was not a choice. Your partner chose to leave you for a REASON. I never, ever wanted, nor did Albert want, this relationship to end at any cost. AT ANY COST. We were already fighting to make our relationship far better than either of us could ever had imagined. I would have died for that man. And I know he would have died for me.
This is harsh but being on the receiving end of all this shit is harsher. So to everyone who thinks they know, or thinks I have it easier in some twisted way because my love died, I have only two words for you: One begins with F and the other with Y.
Britt at Large 
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