Personal Journal

Wrecking Ball, round 2

Today I found two things.
I found the first birthday card I ever gave Jean. It was in the top drawer of her nightstand. I never knew it was right there next to her bed all of that time...
I had used several different colors of glitter on the envelope. With glue and glitter I spelled out I love you Jean with two big hearts. It was a coup for me. And I read the writing inside.
Very creative. And I remembered making it, and writing it, and feeling so in love with someone. Jean's birthday to her was the best day in the world, and I absolutely loved making it joyful for her. What an attitude. This was the day I was born. And I'm happy about that. That was Jean. She wanted everyone to be happy that she was in our lives.

And I found a card from Jean, sealed in an envelope, to me. Dated from 2002, which was the year we moved in together. The lines in the card read "Right there next to you, right this second..."
and on the inside it continued "that's where I'd like to be."

I knew there would be ghosts of Jean to come visit me. I didn't realize they'd be so eloquent.

I found those two things tonight, and I scared the damn cats crying again. Only this time, it doesn't feel good now that it's over.

I feel cheated. I'm angry about what I've lost, angry at god. Sorry so much for Jean, and sorry for she and I because we had the foundation for a great, lifelong love. And it's gone now. I want to replace it, but I can't because she was an inescapable part of that foundation, and so I'm grieving. Grieving for once without guilt for what god took from ME.

I've always had a pretty solid understanding of god and how life isn't fair. I never really worried too much about it, knowing somewhere inside of me that the sum total of god's universe is good.

But I think tonight that's shaken, perhaps for the first time in my life. Because even if the sum total is good, some of the parts are fucked and awful. I'd never had handed to me one of those parts until now.

I don't know what to do with it. I get caught a lot of the time between wanting to grieve for Jean - as if I could do her grieving for her - that she didn't want to die. I think I should supplant her life with mine from this point forward. And then I start to feel like I really lost something. I mean I know I did, but I've been disconnected from that.

The wrecking ball is the term I use when it hits me. What I myself lost. What I feel for myself, within myself. I don't mind when the wrecking ball bashes down a wall nice and clean and devestates me. It comes in and goes out.

But I've got a real sickening feeling that one of these swings, it's going to drag me underneath it for a long time, and pin me under it.

I've had a lot of sick feelings today. It makes me sick. I never really stopped during Jean's illness to take stock of what I would lose. I can think back to the days where intellectually I understood that her cancer eventually would kill her. But I never took stock of what I myself would be losing in her.

I got so into the caretaker identity that I must acknowledge that my identity as a lover was diminished. I regret that now, very very much, because as much as I told Jean that I loved her... I didn't perhaps act ... I didn't act enough out of my romantic feelings for her. I acted of my protective feelings for her most of the time. I'm upset at myself for that, but I know I did mostly real well. I wish I had been perfect.

But now the romantic in me is awakening.
To a nightmare.

It is never too late to be what you might have been. -- George Eliot
Courage to start and willingness to keep everlasting at it are the requisites for success. -- Alonzo Newton Benn