Digging in
2006 has been the worst year of my life. And it has been filled with death for more people I know, or know of, than any other year I’ve ever been aware of. I’m grieving, so many friends I know are grieving. My cousin is grieving her mother still, 20 years after she passed, because she was not allowed her grief as a child at the time.
And yet, I don’t want 2006 to end. I don’t want January 1, 2007 to come. Because it will herald the start of a year in which my sweetie isn’t in the world. As long as it’s 2006, he was here half the year. I can stretch that out in my mind in the moments I need to lie to myself about how much time has passed, and say “He was still here in 2006,” despite having passed exactly in the middle of it. But 2007…there’s no getting around the fact that he wasn’t here for any of it. And I don’t want to be in that space.
I know that time will pass. I know it must. And I hate it. I resent it. Every day that passes brings me further away from days we shared. I try to tell myself that it also brings me one day closer to reuniting with him, since my days are numbered, even if I don’t know how many there will be. But that’s not the overriding thought. It’s that time is yanking an unwilling me further away from those days when we were together and happy.
We have a different relationship now, obviously, but it is current, at least. I do all the talking, and hope he’s listening; I think he is. I cannot hold onto the past, and I know that. They don’t let you live in museums; you can just visit, and then you have to go back to your life. Unreasonable though I may be, I want to go back to when he was here, and stop time. I do. I must want that, or the passing of days wouldn’t feel like sandpaper across my soul. I must, or I wouldn’t feel the strong compulsion to dig my heels in and refuse to move, as if it would do one bit of good.
You’d think that after losing him, I would understand that you cannot hold onto anything through your own will, that it’s out of your control, let alone the past. And I do. But what I know and what I want don’t always agree. I can want things that are totally unreasonable, impossible, and nonsensical. I give myself permission. If the universe can have its way with me, I grant myself license to respond any way I damn well please.