So, here I am writing all of these words, but then sometimes I stop and realize no matter how much I write, no words can truly capture the world that I find myself in now so suddenly.
But I wanted to try, specifically to try to capture what this place is like. Because it feels more like a different place. Not the same place at all as the one I lived in pre-phone call.
In this world, I don’t feel like I can be standing up for very long. I prefer to lay in my bed. When I do get up, I always feel a head rush and have to stop for a moment. Food is not something I ever think about- it’s just something I try to put in my body so that I continue to live.
In this world, I rarely feel like going outside, but when I do it’s as the life that happens there is so sharp and so harsh that something in me will burst if I stay out there too long. Like I am a water balloon and the outside world is a cactus. The clouds look enormous to me. The sky looks more round.
I walk much more slowly.
Sounds are piercing: someone coughing, a little child whining.
A few times a day, a part of me recognizes what is happening- what is really going on here- and my chest gets cold- and I just briefly catch the reality that my husband has drowned while on tour. But just as the horror is sinking in, it is gone again.
Each day is more difficult than the next in a different way. Grieving is in no way linear. It truly doesn’t follow the five stages of grief that I learned about back in AP Pysch. It is circular, more like a spiral- and there is no end, like a chord at the end of a song that does not resolve. Dan hated those.
Julia, such beautifully expressed words in your writing… This is just random, but your entry reminded me of when I was 11. My appendix burst right before surgery and I was hospitalized for 2 weeks – in physical pain and not able to eat or drink during the time. I remember being skin and bones, very weak, not been outside the whole time and still walking very slowly out of the hospital. everything seemed so strange to me and big. I remember stopping myself, gingerly turning around to look at the gloomy hospital building from where I recovered, just to get one look at it before I left altogether. Your entry just reminds me of that day.