I was telling you how hard life has been without you, how I have missed you so and that I’ll never let go. You were telling me you knew exactly how I feel and that you feel the same but you wouldn’t come back. I tried to get you to explain why. I told you I would do anything but it didn’t matter. Then I saw you having sex w her. You had that connection with her that you and I had. I just don’t believe it’s that good. I don’t believe you have the connection with her that we had. I woke up sobbing and my day was spent thinking of you and aching for you with such sadness. When will it ever go away?

Mom died today and the only person in the world that could possibly understand is you…

but you’re gone.

Why do you continue to haunt my dreams? You came home to me with the kids. I was so happy but you wouldn’t really communicate with me. You were cold and distant and I was left wondering why you were here.

I miss you so much. I have this ache that never ends. I wish I had your strength. I wish I could just forget. I wish I could hate you.

I had a dream of you again. I’m tired of missing you. I’m tired of dealing with the grief of losing you and the dreams I had for us.

No truer works can be said and while you aren’t dead it’s as if you are because you are gone from me and never returning.

The grief comes in waves. When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive.

In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out.

But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.

Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O’Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.

The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too. If you’re lucky, you’ll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.

Im sitting here at 555 in the room we hung out in. I wish we could go back. I would do so much different.

So I’m fostering kids now. We have a great one. He’s a teenager. It’s something I always wanted to do but could never get you to be agreeable to it. I remind myself of things like that often…. the things we had such differing opinions on. Still I miss you. Still I wish things could have been different.

It seems logic can not over ride what my heart feels….

One would think after all this time there wouldn’t be any more emotional days……but there still are. The dreams still come and facebook reminds me of all the years of memories past. My mind can’t seem to focus on other things. Today I’ve been thinking a lot about the last baby I lost. What is the fucking point? I can’t help but think I never would have left you if I hadn’t wanted kids so bad. I was crying and told my husband I was thinking about the baby when he asked. He doesn’t mean to be so cold. He’s just the way he is. You would have touched me………hugged me…. met that emotional need in that moment and I wouldn’t have had to ask. You would have just known what to do. You were the best at everything – making me laugh, making me cry, making me happy, making me sad, kissing, sex, passion, I could go on and on.

Memorial weekend is coming. I will be camping alone with the dogs wishing you would show up, remembering our adventures good and bad. Until that day, I love you and I let you go.

I have this rage inside me. I picture myself screaming at the top of my lungs, letting it all out. It sounds strong, hate filled, scary, and I never actually let it out but I see it. It’s there off an on and comes up for different reasons. I think it’s me screaming to the universe “I’ve had enough, I can’t take anymore, and what the fuck else do you want from me?”. Maybe someday I will actually let it out.

I’m lonely.

I miss you. I miss you so much some days I can’t stand it. I want you. I want to have sex with you even if that is all it is. I know it would be like it used to be, just how I imagine it…how I remember it. How are you still such a part of my daily thoughts? Am I really just a memory to you?

I sent an email to you today. I know you won’t respond. What is wrong with me?