Twelve months...

It’s raining outside when I wake up. I somehow managed to sleep until 9am. I get out of bed not wanting to acknowledge that it’s April 20th and Rob has been gone a full year. At about this time last year, the sun was up and he was leaving my place for work. The last thing I said to him was “I love you”, and he was gone.
Hours later I was on the phone with my dad saying “Daddy, I’m never going to see him again, never going to touch him again, never going to hear him again…” over and over. I wanted him to fix it, change it, tell me it was a mistake but instead he said nothing.
This morning, I eat breakfast and go to the coffee shop I frequented when I first moved here. I set up my computer in a small room in the back and write. I don’t cry, acknowledge anyone, or look up really from what I’m doing. I drinking a soy latte in Rob’s memory, remembering the day we met. I was standing behind him in line at Starbucks, not realizing he was who he was and I watched him order a soy latte thinking that was interesting. After trying his one day a few weeks after meeting him that day, I was hooked.
A couple hours later when I couldn’t sit still anymore, I leave the coffee shop and walk through the drizzly rain home. Tears find me on the street, but I don’t let them fall. I don’t know what this is. Right after Rob died all I wanted to do was talk and not crying wasn’t an option. It wasn’t like me to do all of that so openly but it felt so good that eventually I started this whole blog action.
At home I pull out my journal from last spring and read about the events of April 20th. I was angry at Rob but didn’t know why. I wanted his attention but he was so focused on getting to Robby’s that I remained angry, feeling like an afterthought. Yes, I had to work as well but I wanted him to stop for a minute and quit worrying. The whole time I was with Rob I had this feeling that I should tell him absolutely everything always. I felt that there wasn’t enough time ever, that I was trying to squeeze everything in. I’m assuming he didn’t feel this way. I thought my feelings were stemming from my impending move to Chicago. I never imagined what actually happened.
The morning he left my house I cried and cried but not understanding why. I eventually got dressed and went to work, still feeling a bit “off”. That feeling was replaced with the most profound hurt I’ve ever experienced when my dad called that afternoon.
I shut the journal, unable to read the conversation I had with Daddy and put on my gym clothes. I leave and walk to the train, my eyes avoiding contact with anyone on the street. Rage is bubbling under my skin. I don’t know where to pin point it or what to do with it but it isn’t going away. I don’t know how to comprehend Rob’s year long absence. He was just here. I was just waiting for him on a Friday night, he was just making me laugh, I was just telling him a story, we were just accumulating atrocious phone bills, he was just saying “I love you.” No matter where I go, who I talk to, what I see…no matter how many words I type, he’s not coming back and it’s enough to make me insane so to ward off the straightjacket, I’ll just be mad until I can think of a better idea.
I push dumbbells over my head. Again, tears want to make an appearance and again I blink them back. I’m suddenly afraid of being vulnerable. I want nothing to do with anyone. I’m terrified of appearing unstable. I’ve been so focused lately on being the “perfect” employee, the “perfect” girlfriend, the “perfect” friend that I seem to have lost sight of that fact that I’m a human with many more emotions other than “happy” and right now, I’m not willing to accept it. Somewhere in my mind, I seem to believe that acceptance means this really did happen, Rob really is gone, and this…right now, is my life as I now know it and that is too much to take in. I sometimes feel I’m re-living someone else’s life when I go back and think of Rob and experience the memories I have of him. It is such a rude awakening when I’m forced to see that this is all real, and it all happened.
When I’m finished at the gym I go home to drop my bag off and head out again for a run. It feels like any other day, running up Milwaukee Ave., looking at the shops, dodging people, and singing along with my iPOD in my head. I’m simply refusing to think about anything else.
At home again thoughts of Rob start creeping back into my head. I wonder how he would want me to spend today. Am I doing ok so far? If everything were reversed, how would I want him to spend his day if I were gone? I think to myself that I would want him to do whatever he wanted that made him happy. I took a shower and went to the coffee shop I met Charlie in.
I tried to write some more but it’s too hard. I keep staring out the window. Mom has called twice. It’s not that I don’t want to talk, I’m unable (or maybe I’m unwilling) to do so. I find that I’ve wanted to push away the people I’m closest to while reaching out to the people I’m sorta-kinda close with and tell them everything. Whatever “everything” may mean…
Instead I reach out to no one, still afraid I am unable to handle what might come out of me, and unable to handle another person’s response. I try to write some more but eventually give up and go home, but not before stopping for a pint of ice cream which I promptly consume to it’s entirety while continuing to write on my laptop. I know this won’t solve any problems, it just will numb me for a moment so I can not be here.
I decide to take a break from writing and email a friend of mine who had a similar experience several years ago. She’s now happily married and we’ve talked a little bit about our grief and how we each have handled it shortly after Rob died. (she lives in Atlanta) I wanted to know about her current relationship with her husband and how they both handled her experience, plus I wanted to know what she felt after her first love had been gone a year.
She writes me back quickly saying she doesn’t really remember the first year and time really does make things better although the sadness never goes away. She goes on to tell me about her husband and how he’s so different from the boyfriend she lost that it’s impossible to make comparisons. She also says that she doesn’t talk a lot about it because he’s never had anything like this happen to him before and it’s hard for him to hear about or see her hurt.
I feel this way about Charlie. He’s so completely different but still just as wonderful as Rob. Sometimes though, at the most random times I feel like I need to talk though. Half the time I don’t know how or what to say really, it’s just this urge to get something out.
I shut the computer down, unable to do anything or think about anything else. When I walk into my room, I change into my pajamas unable to look at the pictures of Rob’s smiling face on my bookshelf and fall into bed hoping sleep comes fast.