I reached a new low today. A series of seemingly small events culminating with a missed opportunity for lunch out with my coworkers left me in tears. I couldn’t think or respond to anything. In the past when the stresses of the day ganged up in me to leave me reeling like this I would grab my cell phone and call Michele. She was always there to give me a safe place to fall, always there to offer unbiased counsel, always there to tell me that I would be okay.
Today I desperately wanted to talk to her and I couldn’t. I have had the inclination to call her several times in the last 7 weeks, almost daily in fact. But this event was the most powerful in terms of the emotional impact it had on me. I had to leave the building and retreat to my car where I could try to center myself and regain some kind of hold on reality.
I have considered writing letters to her to express the things I can’t say out loud any more. Considering this is bittersweet at best, even though writing is a good outlet for me, knowing that she’ll never read my words has thus far prevented me from using this tool. I have noticed that my output on this site has increased in the past few weeks, so I am writing some. But I sorely miss the safe place to fall when the pressures of the day overwhelm me.
Michele and I had bought plane tickets to travel to NC for Thanksgiving way back in early September. We did this through Expedia.com and I called them to see about getting a refund once I made the decision not to go by myself. I sent all the paperwork they asked for THREE weeks ago and today I called to see what the status of the exception refund was. They claim they’ve never received my letter.
Now I know that when I’ve used that excuse in the past I was lying, so I am assuming they are lying as well. When was the last time the USPS lost a letter? They just don’t want to refund the $526 to me. So now I get to resubmit my claim, this time using a “traceable shipping method.” I.E., Fed Ex.
Bastards.
The worst part is they are only going to turn around and submit it to the airline for me. They say it could be 2 - 3 months before I get the refund and that my claim could be denied altogether. Happy happy, joy joy.
Sigh.
Once upon a time I wrote about dysosmia, which is the fancy term for olfactory hallucinations. When my allergies or sinus are upset I smell smoke where there isn’t any. Usually it’s just a faint whiff of smoke and I know that there is nothing there, but sometimes the odor is persistent and strong enough that I start to wonder if there is a fire. I used to ask Michele if she smelled it on those occasions to reassure myself that everything was okay. Now I have to move through the apartment looking in closets and checking appliances.
It’s funny the little things that you take for granted in a relationship, that are there and important but unnoticed against the larger backdrop of life. Even things your partner did that annoyed you are missed. The fact that Michele left rinsed but dirty dishes in the sink rather than putting them in the dishwasher meant that she was there. The empty sink is a reflection of the emptiness in my life right now.
I guess a part of grief is exhaustion. I find that I run out of energy very quickly these days; two hour naps upon arrival home from work are becoming the norm. Of course the first few weeks of this ordeal I was unable to sleep until I was utterly exhausted. Trying to go to bed before that state was reached only resulted in an internal slide show accompanied by a litany of questions for which there are no answers. Several times now I have resorted to taking 1/2 a Xanax which not only makes me a little drowsy, it keeps the demons of “what if” and “if only” at bay.
Tonight I had planned on attending the normal Tuesday workout at the new dojo, but even after a 2 hour nap I was still so tired I could hardly keep my eyes open. Instead I had a meal of leftover meat loaf and potatoes, and then I took a hot soak in the tub. I’ve just finished a small bowl of chocolate ice cream and I am headed to bed. Hopefully to sleep long and peacefully.
Every night the we went to sleep at the same time Michele and I shared some endearments. It was a part of our daily ritual and I have missed it. The past week or so I have started saying my part softly in the darkness and listening in my heart for her responses. It has been helping, which makes the night time a little less daunting.
In 2002 Peter Gabriel released his latest album, called “UP”. One of the songs on that album had previously been used in the soundtrack for the movie “City of Angels”; a song called “I Grieve”. In an interview I read about the album Pete Gabriel talked about the impact an earlier song (“Don’t Give Up”) had made on people struggling with overwhelming odds. This new song he said was similar in that he hoped it would talk to people grieving.
It has certainly spoken to me.
It was only one hour ago It was all so different then There’s nothing yet has really sunk in Looks like it always did This flesh and bone It’s just the way that you would tied in Now there’s no-one home
I grieve for you You leave me so hard to move on Still loving what’s gone They say life carries on Carries on and on and on and on
The news that truly shocks is the empty empty page While the final rattle rocks it’s empty empty cage And I can’t handle this
I grieve for you You leave me Let it out and move on Missing what’s gone They say life carries on They say life carries on and on and on
Life carries on In the people I meet In everyone that’s out on the street In all the dogs and cats In the flies and rats In the rot and the rust In the ashes and the dust Life carries on and on and on and on Life carries on and on and on
It’s just the car that we ride in A home we reside in The face that we hide in The way we are tied in And life carries on and on and on and on Life carries on and on and on
Did I dream this belief? Or did I believe this dream? Now I can find relief I grieve
For several weeks now I have been holding my tongue regarding a posting made to Michele’ site. Shortly after I converted the site to be a place to remember Michele her brother sent me a posting to include, along with a composite picture to display.
Immediately upon reading his words I felt myself trapped and uncertain what to do. I knew that Michele’s experience with her brother was vastly different that what Lee was portraying, that they weren’t close at all. In fact Michele had cut off her relationship with her brother as it only brought her pain. My quandary was what to do with his posting, after all I had solicited comments and postings from all her friends and family. So I posted it to her site and held my thoughts.
I frequently visit the site and reread the words there and every time I run across that posting I get angry and upset again. Obviously I needed to do something to address the feelings it brought up in me. Through out our relationship I tried to balance my fierce desire to protect Michele from any threat real or imagined with a need to allow her to have her own life. I never wanted to take care of myself by “forcing” her to be a certain way. So I stayed out of her relationship struggles with her parents and brother, just as she stayed out of my own relationship with my family. She was fully capable of taking care of her self. However, now she can only speak to those people who knew her true heart, so I have added my comments to Lee’s posting on her site.
Having taken this step has released a large bolus of anger inside of me, I feel lighter and more centered than I have for a while. I guess I didn’t realize just how upset I was by the revisionist recollections put on her site by someone she was afraid of, and by someone she wanted out of her life.
Michele, I know that I may have built karma with Lee by calling him on his posting, but it took care of me to do so. I will gladly pay this debt when it come due.
Over the weekend, with my brother’s help, I dug out my two old Intel machines from storage, along with a monitor and keyboard. I set up the spare desk in the unused bedroom and my plan is to use it hold a Linux server and a Windows XP workstation. I want to play with Linux to learn it better, and I’d like to have an XP machine so I can run the same development software at home that I use at work on the same platform.
At first I thought neither of my two storage machines were going to work. The slower 600 MHz machine gave me a “disk boot error” when I turned it on, and the faster 1000 MHz machine made ominous clicking noises and gave me a cryptic disk failed error. I took apart the 600 MHz machine (“roo”) and vacuumed it out. There was considerable dust collected on every surface. After re-seating all the connections and hooking it back up it booted into Fedora Core 1, the last OS it contained. W00t!
I then promptly installed Ubuntu Linux, perhaps the easiest install of Linux I have every experienced. Other than taking a while (maybe 40 minutes end-to-end) the install worked flawlessly, recognizing all my hardware and the network without any work on my part.
I suspect the GHz machine has a bad primary disk drive (the odd clicking sound) and so I’ll have to take it further apart to get it working again. It has two drives (30 GB and 20GB) so I am hoping I can use the other one as the primary and get things working again. Of course this means finding my Windows XP install CD and going through whatever hoops Microsoft has put into place to re-license it on a new drive. Maybe next weekend…
For now I’ll play with Ubuntu and be content at having 3 operating systems at my disposal (Mac OS X - 10.3.9, Windows 2000, and Ubuntu).
Tonight is a bad night.
Tonight is one of those nights when I can’t sleep, when my fears, and worries, and anxieties get the better of me. I’m physically tired yet unable to sleep. I feel trapped and out of control about everything.
The upstairs tenants are loud and noisy, sometimes they have domestic violence that is scary to be near. They smoke, and all their friends seem to smoke as well. They stand outside my bedroom window and talk and drink and smoke at night sometimes. I can’t have my window open without getting the stench of their smoke in my space. And I am afraid to say anything for fear of retribution.
Recently they acquired a dog, which initially was barking all the time, we complained several times to the apartment management. The last time we told the manager we were going to escalate the matter to the city if they didn’t do something about it. Within hours of our having mentioned to her the SPCA, the male upstairs tenant was knocking on our door. On the surface it was to apologize. But then he said that he had been told some one was threatening to call the pound on his dog. Obviously there is no trusting the manager, or no confidentiality with her.
So I am reluctant to approach them about the midnight smoking parties outside my window. I’m looking forward to freezing rain, sleet, and bitter cold. Hopefully it will drive them inside and away from my little sliver of fresh air. I hate being a captive in my own apartment. I don’t like it that the insensitivity of others intrudes on my space, and makes me feel afraid. Especially now when I don’t have Michele to comfort me, or to help sort this out.
Having to deal with everything by myself these days is pushing me harder than I realize. I am at my outer limits; physically tired, emotionally drained, mentally spent, spiritually exhausted. And I don’t seem to be able to recover any ground in any of those areas. At best I am managing to maintain where I am, not getting better but not getting worse. I have sparingly used the Xanax I have to help me sleep on several nights now. I don’t like having to medicate myself in order to sleep, but I know I need the rest.
This is so incredibly hard.
This weekend marks a full calendar month since Michele died. It is hard to believe that she has been gone that long. There are times when it feels like she just died, times when I don’t believe she is gone and I expect her to be here, and times when it feels like forever since I last heard her voice, or touched her.
She was the first person who really fit into my space well. I always felt comfortable with her, and I grew to crave the feeling of her hand in mine, or the warmth of her next to me in the night. I realize that as a part of the minds defense against trauma that I still haven’t fully incorporated her loss. I have had the space we shared here in the apartment all to myself for 30 days. By rearranging the furniture layout I’ve claimed the space as mine. By keeping her things here so far I’ve kept her here too, in spirit if nothing else.
This weekend my brother is here. He arranged to come now instead of initially as he was aware that after the initial period of time when friends return to their normal routines, that I would be facing long weekends alone. When he suggested the idea I thought it was a good one, and I have looked forward to his visit ever since. Still it has been odd to share my space with another person. Not that I am complaining, but it is different than what I had with Michele. And it is different from what I have started to expect on my own. The two cats have filled a huge void for me, having them here has been a lifesaver. Literally.
I think the hardest part for me now is not having a place to share the toils of the day. One of the parts of our relationship that was so special was that we gave each other a safe place to fall. I could tell Michele anything, express what ever emotion was figure in the moment and it was okay. She knew how to listen without judgment, without trying to fix it. I really miss being able to talk about work or my fears to someone who will just listen. Too often people want to take care of me by fixing the problem. Just do this, they’ll say. Or say that. I know how to care for myself. I know how to fix my problems. I don’t need that kind of help. All I need, and what I miss more than anything, is that safe place to fall.
Once upon a time I ran afoul of software that I had installed and forgotten about. Recently I’ve been making a mountain out of a molehill regarding my home network setup. Ever since we moved here I’ve wanted to have a network server, I just hadn’t taken the time to set it up. With long evenings and weekends looming I thought this would be a good time to execute my plans.
In hindsight I can only say that my thought processes are fuzzier than I realized even a month after Michele died.
All I needed to accomplish my goal was to move the cable modem and wireless router from the main room to the spare bedroom. Since that router has 4 unused Ethernet ports in back I would be able to plug in all three spare computers if I desired. No new equipment required. The two main computers are both wireless capable and can connect to the LAN regardless of where they are in relation to the router.
What I did was to scour the city for a new Ethernet bridge that could be hooked into an old hub so the machines in the spare room could be plugged in to the network. Failing to find what I wanted I bought a new 802.11g router that I was going to use as a bridge coupled with the old hub.
Understand that I have been thinking about this for a week or so, and trying to make the router cum bridge work for a couple of nights. And all I needed to do was move the modem and router from one room to the other. Took three, maybe four minutes to set up.
I’m a big dopey.