I had a meltdown...

I had a meltdown today.  Work was stressful.  I’m leaving in a week.  The house is a mess.   I have to get the taxes to the accountant next week.  I have a doctor’s appointment on Monday that always takes twice as long as it should.  My sister-in-law and her cousin are staying the night next Wednesday and Andrea’s brother arrives the next day.  The pressure kept building.  I've been assigned to a new project at work and I don't yet know the parameters.  The pain in my neck and shoulders was unbearable.  I’m exhausted because I haven’t been sleeping.  My boss is coming to town the day after I return.  I heard a song that reminded me of Andrea.  I had a meltdown.

I hit the “away” button on IM, walked away from the desk and just wept.  I am still a mess nine months after Andrea passed away.  We were a team.  We kept each other going and now I am so alone without her.  I curled up in a ball on the bed and cried.  The last couple of months she was tired all the time and was home all alone when I was at work.  I felt so badly for her because now I feel that aloneness, too.

After Andrea died I threw myself into my work partly to keep myself occupied, partly because I’m living on one income now and had to make sure I got a raise and a decent bonus and partly to try to move on.  Well, I succeeded at the first two but the third still eludes me.  Moving on is hard because I don’t necessarily want to move on.  I want her to hug me and tell me she loves me.  I am just an empty shell without her; she was my substance and reason for being.

I know these meltdowns are further and further apart, but that doesn’t lessen the pain at the time I’m going through them.  Intellectually I understand that time does indeed heal all wounds, but my heart is still broken and on days like today it feels like I can never be whole again.

I need this trip.  I need to do something on my own that will be my own experience and my own memory.  I need some time to play in the ocean and do something different.  I just plain need time but I want to somehow skip over the pain and get to the living.  It doesn’t work that way.