What can I say that I haven’t already said? I find myself in an endless mind loop, incapable of considering new avenues. The cycle of repetition is frustrating but also reassuring. These thoughts are too familiar. Maybe by pacing back and forth through them, I’ll see something new or remember something old that I need to know? The past two years I’ve spent immersing myself in someone else’s world and needs- it’s like that time is fighting to stay relevant while I slide back into my old home life. I may be in Ohio instead of Massachusetts, but I’m with my family, talking about diets and cousins and softball games. If I didn’t have Trey, it would be like no time had past at all, based on the physical situation and day to day life. I’m trying to find some way to marry who I was before Robert and who I was during our time together. I can’t be just Susie anymore, but I’m also emerging from the silent automaton I had become, Mrs. Miller trapped in the pattern of work-hospice-sleep. I’ve always enjoyed new roles and shifting identities; this one is going to take some work before I’m ready for opening night.

Trey has somewhat regressed, sleeping-wise, and isn’t sleeping through the night anymore. He’s in the crib and not in the bassinet anymore so that may be why. He used to be by my side at night where I could reach over and comfort him, but now he has to start crying loud enough to wake me up before he gets attention. I’m trying all the things the book say to, so I’m not too worried. The lack of sleep is wearing me down, but I functioned on a lot less when Trey was newborn and Robert was at home needing assistance as well. Hey, I am the lizard queen, I can do anything.

Today I am haunted by images that fly past me like speeding cars.  A blur bleeds into another, and they become the same memory in one choking glance. Him in his last moment of physical life, spewing mucus and shaking while we sobbed- our wedding and his eyes, glinting and winking at me as he repeated his vows- his hands on my stomach, talking to the baby inside of me that didn’t live, February of last year- his daughter holding my hand as we strolled through the supermarket, negotiating sweet things for good behavior- him cradling our son in the last weeks of his life, explaining how Trey’d always be a Texan though I’d take him far from there in the future. None of it was supposed to happen so soon. There was supposed to be time to plan and to see things. I can only run so far and for so long. I am an old pro at pretending to not feel something. Now I’m overwhelmed with renewed shock, and guilt for weakening in those last months. I was so tired of the fight, sick of going back and forth to the hospitals and dealing with his pickiness and sudden cravings. I was exhausted from work and from Trey and I didn’t want to do anything at all, anymore. I gave up a bit. I didn’t want to hear crying anymore. And when he finally gurgled his last horrifyingly pained breath, I was so relieved. I should’ve wanted him to stay longer but at the end, I wanted him to just let go. It was too much for too long. I was as tired as he was.

We were married for eight months. Our son is six months old. We lived together for a year and a half. We didn’t have enough time to get to know one another properly, to see each other’s best sides. I was impatient and bitchy and resentful of having to live in Wichita Falls. He was insecure and hurting and disliked that I was smarter than he was. We loved each other, but I don’t know what would’ve happened if he wasn’t sick. Who we were, and what our relationship was, became defined by his illness. I saw his best, he saw my worst, and vice versa. If he wasn’t ill, would we have lasted?  I honestly don’t know. And that’s the guilt that pulls at me.

It’ll be a month tomorrow that I watched him die before my eyes. A bride at 28, a mother at 29, and a widow at- well, 29. What else will happen before I turn 30? I don’t think I want to know.

Do we love people for who they are or in spite of who they are? It seems that all relationships depend upon one or both partners willing to look past some deception. Is it the test of love that we’re willing to forgive a lie or an infidelity, or does it show how desperately afraid of being alone that most people are? In the past year, I’ve seen so many relationships weakened by unfaithfulness, major omissions, and the little white lies that seem to make up most of our daily communication. We keep our inner selves secret, constructing an idea of who we are that fits better what we wished for as children and dream of even now. To be open and honest, is that the death of dreaming? Or is that inner self the fuel of every day life, the energy that keeps up streaming through the day and into the night when the inner is not so tucked away. Most deceptions are obvious, but we don’t ask the questions we need to ask. If you’re content with them having had a secret, I suspect it means you like having your own as well.

To overanalyze love is to miss the point of it, so I try to avoid this line of thinking but there are days when a little pretentious pondering is unavoidable. Sorry that this is one of them!

I’ve said this before, but I’d like to reiterate it: I am tremendously proud of my friends. So many people in this world drop off the map and never live up their potential. They never go anywhere or try anything new, and they give up on their dreams before the ink’s dry on their high school diploma. You don’t seriously think that the people you met in high school will be your lifelong friends, but I’ve never met anyone who can compare to the women I met there. They were my reason for not running like hell  out of the suburban prison of Holden, and why I started to live again as a teenager. Even now, they’re my role models. My friends went to amazing colleges and universities, they all graduated and they’re all embarking on what they want to do for life. I admire that so much.

Not all their paths are set in stone, but daring to take a journey is admirable in and of itself. For Sarah, moving cross-country and leaving behind the town where she lived and her mother died, it must’ve been terrifying and utterly necessary. Like cutting your own arm after it was gangrenous. She could’ve let herself be boxed in by the expectations of others but she never has. She’ll figure it out, and I think I’m the same way a bit. My journey’s led me from Massachusetts to New York to Texas to Ohio, and I still have miles to go before I sleep. I’ll figure it out though. The working it out is the best part.

The feeling that you’ll never be cool enough, as lame and pathetic as it may be to still want that as an adult. As I gain confidence in one area, a whole new avenue of geekhood opens up. There are people that you can never impress, as hard as you try, as much as you want to, and you’ll always wind up feeling like the big-mouthed little sister who just wants to be a part of things. And no matter where I go, I’m either too smart or not smart enough; too oddball or barely more than mundane; and too young or too old. Most everyone feels this way, I know. I wonder, is there anyone who actually feels like they fit in in this world?

I started Weight Watchers last week, as if I weren’t grumpy enough. It’s time to stop drowning myself in Ghiradelli squares and cheap wine, and I no longer have the excuse of not having enough time to make healthy meals. I love cooking and I’m finally able to do it again. No reason why I can’t substitute butter for cooking spray in a frying pan, is there. I do loathe dieting though. I was born to eat pasta and bruschetta and bread dipped in herbed oil. My best childhood memories involve Italian cookies, potato soup, Fruit Roll-Ups and fried dough. I can put those away for now, or have them only sparingly. I’ve done it before, I can do it again.

I spend a lot of time staring at back roads and blank screens. Sometimes I drive around these unfamiliar streets and I lose myself in the learning of something new, something clean and logical. I don’t know where to go or what to say, or how to say it with any cleverness. My wit’s gone into hibernation and with every word I speak or write, I hear ‘he’s dead’ in the back of my mind. It’s hard to act like myself, worrying about the expectations of others. How it will look, as the grieving widow, if I’m rude or appear to be in too good of a mood. If I speak with my usual sarcasm, will people think I’m ungrateful? Unfortunately my family is receiving the brunt of my mostly-suppressed snarkiness. And the good little Catholic girl hiding in me wonders if my husband is still watching from heaven. I can’t feel him but can he still see me?

I’ve decided to start a blog separate from the Caring Bridge since Robert has passed and his illness would no longer be the focus of it.  I don’t have any set topics in mind for writing now. I suppose I’ll just say whatever comes to mind, since improvising has always worked for me before.

The last few weeks have felt like months. Every day stretches out forever, but I get very little done with all this time. It’s like more time I have to plan, the more the options seem to multiply and I can’t figure out where to go from one moment to the next. It’s the most alien feeling, not having to be anywhere in particular for the first time in two years. No more appointments or deadlines, no more hospitals or hospices to visit, no more job to plan around. It’s just me and Trey now, and I falter before the strangeness of having a choice. Most days, all I accomplish is taking care of Trey and maybe a phone call to handle Robert’s benefits and insurance issues. The rest of the day disappears with pointless web surfing, TV watching and pacing. 

My memories of Robert push to the front of my mind at all the expected times. I suppose there’s nothing new under the sun when it comes to grief. I’ll see his folded-up flag lying on my window bench, or his Bass t-shirt hanging in my closet, and I push away the tide of memories that come rolling in. There’s too much of his stuff and not enough of him for me to breathe. When I think of a negative memory, I don’t fight it as much. They don’t feel like a punch in the gut. I’m more prepared to handle the bad than the good.

I haven’t wanted to speak to anyone lately, and I am sorry for that. I’m terrible at being the gracious widow. I’m exhausted and impatient and my mind follows a broken track of logic.  I want to climb up into a treehouse and read comic books and eat candy until my mother makes me come home at night.

The last two years have aged me ten, I think. How can it have only been two years? Two years is not enough.