#186 OR why am I writing?

When I resurrected this blog in the wake of January's assorted tragedies and uprootings, I contemplated making it private. In the end, obviously, I did not, because I thought no one would read it. I'm still not quite sure why anyone has. I re-read posts only on particularly dark days when it seems impossible to reach the light, when there's a deep, dank place inside me which nothing will illuminate, which nothing can reach. Or on days when I've forgotten a little bit more of her and the agony of that is almost unbearable. I was convinced that no one would want to spend their spare time reading about such pain. And yet it seems that people have, and do, and while I'm grateful...I am also extremely confused. This is not the sort of blog that I read, I don't read widow's blogs or surround myself with the bereaved in an attempt at self-soothing. Instead I come here, and write (poorly) about whatever is hurting me most. Usually it's memories of her, of them, sometimes it's my frankly useless body, and sometimes it's the end of a series of books. I write about what hurts most because I come back to it later to open old wounds and remind myself that I am indeed capable of feeling something. 

I didn't have an audience in mind because I couldn't envisage there being one. I don't have an audience in mind now because...it still seems unbelievable that anyone should want to read anything I have written. That doesn't mean I'm not incredibly grateful for comments, or for people linking to my meagre little corner of misery (something which is absolutely astonishing to me). I am, fawningly so. Even though I have no real idea who I'm aiming this blog at, apart from myself, it's a little unsettling to think that I may manage to disappoint someone that I don't even know. 

I have laid bare very specific aspects of myself here. Things which I cannot say out loud to anyone. But this agony is not (thankfully) all of me and life is improving, slowly. After 186 genuinely awful days, I do still feel guilty about having fun, about doing things, about living. I do still feel that I should not be, that everything I do which is not limited to crying in the dark, is a terrible betrayal. I squash those feelings down. Because what's the point of being alive if that's all that I can do?

I think about them all the time. Right now, even. How ridiculous she would find this situation that I seem to have got myself into. She had to apologize for me not talking, for absent-mindedly wandering off while people were talking to me, for telling people to just be quiet already. The absurdity of me, in my own roundabout way, apologising for talking too much, to complete strangers, would make her howl with laughter. She'd be smug, too, because I'd finally understand how annoying it is to have to smooth down the feathers that I've ruffled.

Really, anyone who reads this...you probably know my wife better than you know me. There's thirty posts about her, about Cambodia, about grief and pain and loss. Posts which make my heart ache when I read them back, posts which bring clouds of memories to sit, heavy on my shoulders and follow me through the day. 

Looking back, it would make more sense to have introduced myself back in January, rather than awkwardly appearing here, in July, after exposing the darkest recesses of my mind. Unfortunately, in January, I wasn't particularly coherent. So here we are. God. It's always at the strangest times that I find I need her, that I realize all over again exactly how much she did for me and how I just don't quite work without her.