My Sun??!?
Tom,
I started crying at work today, poised over my keyboard, in the middle of typing a case comment. I overheard my coworker on a call to her daughter, asking her to put her father's shirts in the dryer. Seriously, this was all it took to set me off. I just dropped everything I was doing and succumbed to the tears.
I don't have a family anymore. I won't ever have one. I'm as dead as you are, alone and unloved at 30. I'm never going to have a husband's laundry to think about, or a daughter's extra hands to pitch in. Everything I do, it's to serve me only, and it's done by me only. Can you imagine how awful and empty that feels? I miss our teamwork. I miss thinking about you and your needs before acting on something. I miss having you to bail me out when I needed help. I don't know if we would have had the guts to go all in and start a family or not, but to know now that we can never try fills me with so much sadness I can't begin to describe to you. Oh, Tom, you would have been such a loving and gentle father. We liked to talk about how you'd be the fun goofy dad with all the science experiments that you'd do with our daughter. I'd be the caring, organized mom who would take our son to ballet class and work during the school year but take summers off to travel with you and the kids. Or we could have foregone all that and just had the most amazing adventures for the 2 of us. I didn't really care, as long as we were together. You would have always come first (okay, maybe an indicator I shouldn't have kids). You were my family, Tom. You were it. I can't count my mom and sister anymore, nor your parents or brother. They aren't "immediate" family anymore - not after we found each other. We were our own family unit. I miss my SPOUSE. My husband. My partner. My lover. My sweetie (my emperor).
I've said before that I don't think I am built to be alone. I take care of people. It makes me happy. I want to invest in someone else's life; their emotions, concerns, goals, and crusades. I want to come home and snuggle into a hug, and watch a funny show or talk about the future. I want to curl my feet up against someone else's at night. I want to hear them breathe and know I am not alone. Smell their body wash after a shower, or find room around their food in the freezer. Our food. I don't want it to be just my food, my body wash, my breaths. I want to debate religion or domestic policy and consider new points. I want to ask a question and always have someone here to answer it. I don't want to go through a big ordeal to think of who I should bother the least with my pesky problems. I want to lift someone up and tell them I'm proud, and I love them. I want to be amazed and I want to be acknowledged. I can't possibly find another you, sweetie, and what's the point of even trying? I don't want you replaced by a cheap knock-off husband, or a family I am too tired to love as much as I loved you. You were it. You were the answer to everything I ever wanted or needed. Why did you have to leave me alone so soon? Are you alone too? Would you be able to feel something like that on the other side of death? Are you watching me make decisions you wish you could weigh in on?
When I was last in Bellingham, I went to Boundary Bay's trivia night by myself (an awkward but brave excursion, I think), and my "team" name was O Sole Mio. I thought it meant "Poor Me, I'm All Alone." I looked it up later and it actually means "My Sun." It's a happy song. Jesus Christ! This is just a perfect example. I'm sad, moping, and I have no one around to correct my ignorance. If you were here, A). You would have probably thought to look it up and teach me the truth, and B). I would have had a partner and the need for a self-pitying name would have been absent to begin with.
I don't know how to fix this. If it involves "fixing" myself, you can forget it. I don't WANT to become a person who is happy with (or even capable of) living alone. I don't like those people, probably. I find them boring and arrogant. Being self-sufficient gets you nothing in the end. The best part of life is sharing it with others. It's the Kindergarten rule! We are social creatures and to deny that is pointless. Cancer took away my most favorite person in the world, the one whose love of life and caring for others mirrored my own. In taking you away, cancer left a hole where that mirror was, and though I keep pouring all the love in my heart out to you, I'm never going to get it back. It's a hole I can't fix or cover up, because that would mean severing the flow of love I have for you. There's no way I could cut it off or send it in any other direction. So where does that leave me? Yup. Alone. Forever.
Thank god I have a Kindle?
~Jana
I started crying at work today, poised over my keyboard, in the middle of typing a case comment. I overheard my coworker on a call to her daughter, asking her to put her father's shirts in the dryer. Seriously, this was all it took to set me off. I just dropped everything I was doing and succumbed to the tears.
I don't have a family anymore. I won't ever have one. I'm as dead as you are, alone and unloved at 30. I'm never going to have a husband's laundry to think about, or a daughter's extra hands to pitch in. Everything I do, it's to serve me only, and it's done by me only. Can you imagine how awful and empty that feels? I miss our teamwork. I miss thinking about you and your needs before acting on something. I miss having you to bail me out when I needed help. I don't know if we would have had the guts to go all in and start a family or not, but to know now that we can never try fills me with so much sadness I can't begin to describe to you. Oh, Tom, you would have been such a loving and gentle father. We liked to talk about how you'd be the fun goofy dad with all the science experiments that you'd do with our daughter. I'd be the caring, organized mom who would take our son to ballet class and work during the school year but take summers off to travel with you and the kids. Or we could have foregone all that and just had the most amazing adventures for the 2 of us. I didn't really care, as long as we were together. You would have always come first (okay, maybe an indicator I shouldn't have kids). You were my family, Tom. You were it. I can't count my mom and sister anymore, nor your parents or brother. They aren't "immediate" family anymore - not after we found each other. We were our own family unit. I miss my SPOUSE. My husband. My partner. My lover. My sweetie (my emperor).
I've said before that I don't think I am built to be alone. I take care of people. It makes me happy. I want to invest in someone else's life; their emotions, concerns, goals, and crusades. I want to come home and snuggle into a hug, and watch a funny show or talk about the future. I want to curl my feet up against someone else's at night. I want to hear them breathe and know I am not alone. Smell their body wash after a shower, or find room around their food in the freezer. Our food. I don't want it to be just my food, my body wash, my breaths. I want to debate religion or domestic policy and consider new points. I want to ask a question and always have someone here to answer it. I don't want to go through a big ordeal to think of who I should bother the least with my pesky problems. I want to lift someone up and tell them I'm proud, and I love them. I want to be amazed and I want to be acknowledged. I can't possibly find another you, sweetie, and what's the point of even trying? I don't want you replaced by a cheap knock-off husband, or a family I am too tired to love as much as I loved you. You were it. You were the answer to everything I ever wanted or needed. Why did you have to leave me alone so soon? Are you alone too? Would you be able to feel something like that on the other side of death? Are you watching me make decisions you wish you could weigh in on?
When I was last in Bellingham, I went to Boundary Bay's trivia night by myself (an awkward but brave excursion, I think), and my "team" name was O Sole Mio. I thought it meant "Poor Me, I'm All Alone." I looked it up later and it actually means "My Sun." It's a happy song. Jesus Christ! This is just a perfect example. I'm sad, moping, and I have no one around to correct my ignorance. If you were here, A). You would have probably thought to look it up and teach me the truth, and B). I would have had a partner and the need for a self-pitying name would have been absent to begin with.
I don't know how to fix this. If it involves "fixing" myself, you can forget it. I don't WANT to become a person who is happy with (or even capable of) living alone. I don't like those people, probably. I find them boring and arrogant. Being self-sufficient gets you nothing in the end. The best part of life is sharing it with others. It's the Kindergarten rule! We are social creatures and to deny that is pointless. Cancer took away my most favorite person in the world, the one whose love of life and caring for others mirrored my own. In taking you away, cancer left a hole where that mirror was, and though I keep pouring all the love in my heart out to you, I'm never going to get it back. It's a hole I can't fix or cover up, because that would mean severing the flow of love I have for you. There's no way I could cut it off or send it in any other direction. So where does that leave me? Yup. Alone. Forever.
Thank god I have a Kindle?
~Jana