#120 OR hollow

These bank holidays are killing me. Two in a row, what do I do with all this empty time? I work anyway, eyeing my overtime spreadsheet with distaste. There's more overtime than regular time. Because if I don't work...what? I prowl the apartment, heavy with silence and motes of dust hanging in beams of sunlight. I'm slowly building more furniture, trying desperately not to think of them while I make it; no use finishing things I can't look at. So I topped the table with a sheet of glass rather than wood. Remembering how she hated the sound glass tables make. Ah, of course. I forgot that things hurt just as much when they have nothing to do with her as when they still carry her perfume.

Places she never went hurt just as much as standing in her childhood bedroom did. And Christ, that hurt. Her Mother asked if I'd like to sleep in there, told me to feel free to take anything I liked, needed. She closed the door and left me standing there, holding a bag, still dressed in my funeral suit, still choked from the memorial service. I slept there, woke frequently, confused and talking in my sleep, dragged my fingers over her things, toys, trophies, posters. Took only one thing; a picture she took of me when we first met, smoke curling in front of the lens, I'm looking down at the counter, serving someone. Not sure why she kept it, pinned to her wardrobe door all those years, on the back she'd written something, unreadable now. No chance to ask her. 

I took the picture, it's in the guest room of course, with everything else I can't stand to touch. Not yet. I left her family with tokens; a necklace of hers, a lock of their hair that her Mother clipped and twisted together at the hospital, photographs of us, a birthday present for them that she had bought early, wrapped and waiting to be posted. There's a similar parcel lurking for me in the guest room, tagged, a card with her writing. Didn't feel much like opening it on my birthday; one hundred and twenty days ago. Don't think I'll feel like celebrating on the 1st of January again. It will always be the day everything was torn apart and tossed up into the air. The day this ache started. The day this hollow settled in my chest. 

I got a phone call on the first, wishing me a happy birthday. I'd just left the hospital, alone, standing on the sidewalk on the verge of a panic attack. Not crying, just stricken, horrified, afraid, what now? What the fuck do I do now? The caller, my oldest friend, told me to ask myself that question every day until I knew. I still don't know any more the 120th time than I did that first time. The temporary answer is - I wait, and see if things improve. But that's not the real answer, that's not enough. 

So I work, and I strip the wallpaper, and build furniture and try to make friends who don't know about this hollow ache in my chest and I wait. But waiting isn't living and it certainly isn't thriving. It's long and it's grey and it's cold and it's so damn lonely that sometimes the ache is worth having because otherwise I might think that this is all there ever can be and ever has been. But the ache tells me there was more. Might be again, someday. 

I keep meaning to say something to you who have been kind enough to follow my blog. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be an appropriate place for me to put something like that so I'm just tacking it on here and hoping everyone will forgive me for cobbling things together. I never expected followers, or comments and certainly didn't expect to be mentioned elsewhere. I started writing because I find it hard to talk, not because I thought anyone would enjoy reading about my anguish. It's hard for me to read this blog and I wrote it, so I imagine it must be difficult for anyone to read, let alone comment on. So while it's wholly inappropriate to say that I hope you're enjoying it - because undoubtedly it's not enjoyment you're seeking in my dark corner of the internet - I am grateful that you thought me worth following, and I hope you find whatever it is you're looking for.