Broken

Tonight, and often, i just feel broken.

I can’t explain why. And i know millions of people (maybe everyone) go through this loss, but i feel broken often, and so tonight.

On good days (oh yes, more and more often) i get up and smile and pretend to be engaged, and even enjoy moments, or minutes, or hours talking on the phone. I have tried to set a routine for ocean or forest walks, (although my friend i hiked with and who comforted me through this hideous dementia journey died 6 months ago) leaving another emptiness.

But some days, a word, a memory, bring me crashing down to loss and loneliness and just … Broken. i can’t get out of bed, no matter how long i sleep. Bed and its dreams is better than the emptiness, when one is broken.

I keep climbing up – clambering up – out of this despair, and make it for a few hours of Normal, laughing, talking, enjoying thinking as always, truely engaged and savouring it like a drink of cool water.

But then… something unexpected pulls me back to the gaping emptiness of Broken. I hardly dare to see my well-meaning and loving friends. Some of them do think, he’s been dying and mentally gone for years, why aren’t you over it? Or ready to be with people?

That might take a great healer and a shrink to explain, but a decade and a half of trauma, physical fear, my sacrificed career changes, a deep miraculous gift of soul-to-soul union, might go a ways to explain this pain.

A month ago i had to file papers with Canada and cried all over the lovely lady’s desk when i had to swear how long we had lived together. This day it was the credit union needing papers signed. I was good at first but after an hour of paperwork, i was staring into the void, broken, again

And a few hours later, suddenly but temporarily furious. How could he leave me like this? WTF? my anger was intense and not healing, just bringing more grief.

Slowly reason returns and i know those long years of our suffering were in part because he did not want to leave, he could not bear it any more than I.

But now i alone must deal with Now, dragging my heart and mind like injured limbs, Broken.

No way to sugar-coat this. I only hope it eases and then i can enjoy life as before, but i suppose always dragging my broken heart behind, like a dead dream.