Killing Me Slowly

21/01/24 

I keep dreaming about him. 

When I wake up its twice as shit. 

At least in my dreams I’m in his arms, his mouth on mine.  Waking up to another endless day without him is like a punch in the gut.   

There’s a brief moment when I open my eyes, before it comes crashing in, and then it hits – the terror, the puking, the knowledge that he’s gone and he’s not coming home to me. 

Over and over, every day, I’m reminded that he’s gone.  (Hah! ‘reminded’, like I ever forget.) 

At work the radio will play tracks that used to be part of the very limited playlist at the company both he and I worked at for a while, and the loss crashes over me like a tsunami.

For a bit, back then, we re-gelled, and it felt like we were a team again – him and me, tight and strong.  Why couldn’t we keep it going? 

I go to put the rubbish out at work, look down the alleyway and ache in my soul because he won’t be parked on the road down there waiting to take me home. 

Not now, not ever again. 

Every item of clothing I have is connected to some memory of him; some good, some bad, some indifferent, but woven into the fabrics nonetheless. Getting dressed is like wrapping myself in another layer of misery.

Around the house I keep stumbling across odds and sods of items left behind – some shoes still in the shoe rack, his bathrobe behind the bedroom door, old slippers under the stairs, boxers and socks tangled in with some other washing….

Like, on some unconscious level he’s left a stayover kit here. 

I have this crazy hope that one day it will turn out to be a great thing that these comfy things are still here, because he’ll need them, because he’ll have unexpectedly stayed here… 

In the meantime, these perpetual memory triggers are like death by a million papercuts; we shopped here, we walked the dog there, our first proper date was here, that funny thing happened there, that’s where we….

On and on and on. 

This pain is absolutely not exquisite.

JP