sending love and encouragement from 4+ years out

[Mizpah]

I don't remember the first few months, and for that I am so grateful.  I know I carried sad little packets of tissues with me everywhere and engaged in public sobbing quite often (it's funny to me now to ponder how many NYC tourists' photos include a crying girl on a bench in the background).  I choked down half a banana and half an English muffin a day.  I know I wrote compulsively in a journal, jotting down every memory I could think of, every detail of his him and his life as I had seen it.  I know that I looked at the sky a lot, with a mythical non-believing feeling that I could talk to him.  I know I sat on a bench in a park a lot, staring at a river, and looking at people walking by, thinking how none of them, none of any of the billions of people in the world, were him.  I know that the phrase "bear the unbearable" became a descriptive staple of my life. 

 

I also know that the YWBB (the board that preceded this one) helped me survive and, much later, thrive.  I "met," through their raw, broken writing and responses to my writing, men and women who had lost their person around the same time as me.  We wrote and read constantly, several times a day.  They made sense to me in a time in which nothing and no one made sense.  I came to know them and to feel I knew their lost loves.  We had hope for each other when we had none for ourselves, and/or didn't want any for ourselves.  Some of those people remain some of my best friends, though we've met only once or twice and though our paths (once identified by the razed, devastated, emotional commonalities) have had significant opportunity to diverge in 4+ years. 

 

I hope this won't come off as condescending.  I'm here to encourage all of you to lean on each other (and those of us further out) as much and as often as you want/need.  Saying it, whatever "it" is, even if it seems obvious and pointless and stupid or crazy or too horrible to say, it helps.  I honestly don't think I'd be doing as well as I am now had I not had the opportunity and taken advantage of the opportunity to pour out my suffering to those who got it. 

 

I'm thinking of you all with so much love and sadness and support and compassion, and hope. 

[DavidsKtBeth]

First off, thank you

 

Second, are you glad you wrote down all your memories of him in your journal?  I'm so scared I'm going to forgot the little things that I love the most. 

 

Really.. I'm just scared shitless..

[Mizpah]

I am glad.  I have not gone back and read it.  But I have the comfort of knowing I have them, and that comfort was and is huge - so much so that I bought a fireproof lockbox for them.  Also, the process was really important to me.  I carried a journal with me everywhere and anytime (I mean anytime, no matter how socially inappropriate!) a thought flitted through my mind, I jotted it down.  I didn't care about style or pretty writing - I just scrawled a thought or memory as it came.  I think there are some pieces that I wrote down several times probably.  It helped me in so many ways.  I too was terrified I would forget.  I think the most important things about a person - the way they walk, the way they carry themselves, their different smiles and transformation of face from one expression to another, the way they smell, the lilt of their voice, etc. - these can never be encapsulated in words.  But writing definitely helped me. 

[Jess]

First off, thank you

 

Second, are you glad you wrote down all your memories of him in your journal?  I'm so scared I'm going to forgot the little things that I love the most. 

 

Really.. I'm just scared shitless..

 

I just passed a year a few weeks ago and what is really interesting to me is that memories keep coming back of him that are more and more vivid. It's little things like how he had oral surgery before I met him and was no longer able to snort so when he would try it was the silliest little wheezing noise. I had forgotten about that but yesterday it just popped into mind all of a sudden unprompted.

 

For the first several months, I had a hard time remembering those sorts of little things, but when I would I would tell someone or jot it down so I was reinforcing the memory. I know it is scary to think you will forget, but I assure you it is all still there in your mind and anything that may be hazy will be back eventually.

[CJF]

Mizpah - your post is so true for me as well.  YWBB was the most helpful form of support I received in those early days and I truly do not know what I would have done without it.  I was on there all hours of the day and night because there was always somebody who understood, who totally got what I was feeling.  I too kept a typed journal from those first few years and every now and again I still add to it when I think of something.  I hope that those who are new to this journey get the same comfort from this site that YWBB gave us.  I don't post much any more but I still read daily - I am going to try to participate more in helping others here instead of thinking what I have to say is not important.  Thanks for making me realize that!