April

I just saw the date click over to April 1st. My brain starting reeling. How on earth can it possibly be a year later? WHAT?! I feel like the universe is playing some sort of trick on me. There is no way it's been that long. It must be some sort of twilight zone where suddenly you wake up and a year has past and you have no idea how that happened.

I'm just totally at a loss of how that could be true. Has the world really continued turning while I've been frozen in time? I simply can't explain it. It's been a moment, but also forever, at the exact same time. I guess when something this unexplainable, this horrible, this contrary to your basic ideas about life, happens, your brain simply can't be present in the same way. I guess it's taken all my energy just to keep existing. Nothing left for processing time.

We've decided to have a small gathering at our home for close friends and family next weekend. It's a party, but not a party. I've been back and forth a thousand times in the past few weeks. Do we want to? Do we not want to? Over and over. Finally, we realized it would be worse if we didn't mark it with other people present. We chose the weekend prior to his birthday because we need that time to ourselves.

I'm trying very hard to not focus on the fact that it's less than a week away. And less than 2 weeks until his birthday. I have no words for that. It can't possible be true.

I have this fear in the back of my mind that people are going to be done giving us our space, after those 2 weeks have passed. I feel as if our time is running out. Good thing for me I stand up for myself. Bad thing for me that I feel I'm going to have to. I don't feel any more ready to rejoin the world now than I did this past year. Nothing has changed. He's still not here. He's still missing every moment of every day. How could a year make me less aware of his constant absence? Each new day is a new day of experiences I know we're not having. Each day is just a glaringly empty as the last. Maybe that's why I haven't tracked the passing of time. Each day just melts into the next. Each morning I wake up to an empty day and the same broken heart. Each night I fall asleep with the same hole in my heart. It's always the same.

I can look back and see some healing. I know I'm in a different place in my grief than I've been in the early days. The hallowed out heart is just who I am now.

Somehow, this is my life.

Somehow, it's April again.