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30 days out

Tomorrow makes it a month since I lost the person I loved the most in the world. I’m still crying on and off in bursts all day. I can feel a dramatic lessening of tension since the sexual assault trial was cancelled. It’s better for me not to go through it. It’s terrible for me that two governments have informed me that rape doesn’t count when it happens to me.

I wish Noah was here. I wish we were getting on with the fun of retirement and getting ever more intertwined.

Sometimes I write poetic things about how we were two trees too weak to stand alone so we leaned in and became one entwined entity.

Let me fucking tell you it is not god damn poetic feeling torn asunder because my love is gone. My soul hurts so much. I was not this hopeless when I was crouched naked, puking from the alcohol my dad gave me. I was not this hopeless when he held the gun to my head and asked me if I deserved to live and then told me to prove it with my mouth on his cock. I was not this hopeless when I decided that I could figure out how to get people to stop raping me–I’d take several boxes of sleeping pills all in a go and that would solve that. It didn’t. That just brought ever more fascinating levels of humiliation and debasement into my life.

Hopeless is not the water I swim in. I burn with hope intensely. But I had a magic man who made all my dreams come true. Then I lost him. I still want the satisfaction of seeing our science experiment through–will we create people who want to be in relationships with us as adults when they don’t have to? We’ve managed to miss the worst offenders that would make it likely. Now I get to find out how bad my fuck ups feel for the kids when their dad isn’t here to run interference.

Luckily we have practiced that anyway because he wasn’t around all day? I am deeply proud of my kids when they tell me I am speaking in a way that isn’t ok and it needs to change. Fuck yes. A long time ago I saw some sort of meme-thing that said something like, “Speak so well to your children that they will be indignant when someone doesn’t.”

That’s a mixed thing. Obviously as white people with financial stability we don’t need to be spoken to like we are better than anyone else. We fucking aren’t. Everyone should be treated with a base level of civility. When you observe someone giving less than that to someone else, speak up. I had a lot of conversations with Noah, and we did a fair bit of active role play, for him to learn how to make room for the voices of people who were not white men. He learned how to give all credit for ideas to the originators while amplifying their voices and expressing admiration for the excellent solution.

I was surprised when I heard my son rattle off to someone, “Of course I can tell you fifteen different reasons I think you are autistic. My whole family is and social interactions is one of our biggest special interests.” Like, I don’t know that I had really thought about it that way but it’s accurate.

I feel so overwhelmed by the magnitude of the struggle I have in front of me. I got a really great email from our old lawyer (who is now retired and unable to help) where she gave me a lot of advice about loving myself because I have nothing to give if I don’t feel cared for.

I don’t really have hope for any kind of future where I feel loved and cared for by a special person. I think I will get drips and drabs from many people and I will turn them into a glorious kaleidoscope of a quilt. Collectively it will be almost enough.

Noah will never hurry to bed smiling because he needs to metabolise for me so I don’t feel cold when I climb in after brushing my teeth. I will never grin like a fool and giggle with delight because I get to climb back in bed with Noah after my first wake up. The best man in the world picked me. I was so happy. I had so much hope spilling out of me for adventure and learning and growth.

In the widow group some folks were talking about how 9 or 12 months in they are still unable to do basic care stuff for themself and they are really struggling. I am feeling incredibly lucky that even though I don’t have hope I have a whole tanker vessel full of duty.

I am not judging these folks. They have not had giant really bad things happen very often in their lives. They don’t know how to adjust their self perception that quickly. They are struggling with how to evolve. They feel intense guilt about accepting that evolution will be necessary.

It’s been kind of lovely, actually, getting to the point where I see that and I feel a softness in my belly. I’m so glad you have overall had such a good life.

I lost the love of my life. That was just Tuesday. I was declared an unrapeable whore. That was just Tuesday.

It’s fucking amazing and hilarious that it’s true. Both things did happen on Tuesdays. I’m not going to bother looking back in my shit sandwich of a life to see how many of my shit anniversaries started on Tuesdays. I’m not feeling that masochistic.

Terrible things happening to me is simply par for the course of my life. I have had fairly brief periods where nothing bad happened. Even when nothing bad is happening my life is a hamster wheel of constant change in a way that would give most people vertigo. I don’t think people should be more like me. The training grounds are inhumane.

I am realising that I need to look at our calendars and think of them both separately and together because I don’t think the 4 of us can work perfectly in synch anymore. I think we need a lot more of people doing their own. I’ll still track with Shortie most of the time but I need to get some support so I can be an adult outside of parenting.

I am going to have to find ways to fill my own bucket. I don’t think I’ll get it close to full, but even 50% would be a big upgrade. I went climbing on Tuesday. I’m going to yoga today. Both things require cycling. I’m going to add social time with friends. Pam leaves in 7 days and that feels scary.

Luckily, she filled my freezer with dumplings because she wants me to have glorious vegetables to eat. Nom.

I need to get my head together enough to email the folks who are coming. I’m learning more about the shape of what I need. This is good. I feel sick but there’s no way out but through.

I’m afraid I am going to spend every morning for the rest of my life hiding and rocking and saying “I want Noah.” Well, I guess he has replaced longing for my mother. He gave me so much more comfort and love than she did and he knew me less time. I want Noah so much I feel like I will explode. I know it’s only been 30 days. Time will dull the knife edge of this pain.

I’m trying to pawn off my alcohol. I’m keeping some for cooking. Mostly though I am not permitted to do anything to drown my sorrows. I have to focus on health, stability, strength, resilience, and avoiding all things that compromise any of those traits is the first step. Time is all I have to throw at this horrible pain.

I wish I got to live a different story.

He was my grown up

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I’m having terrible thoughts. Did I need him to die so I could finish growing up? I definitely am struggling with all the tasks I’m having to learn at speed. I handled money once it entered our family bank account. He couldn’t handle paying bills–it freaked him out. But he did the accountants, and lawyers, and financial advisors and immigration stuff. I’m having to notify all of these people and explain my abject ignorance and lack of knowledge for how to move forward.

Did you know that people who earned close to 6 figures from working with you are very nice about writing out a primer that even my ignorant, autistic, immigrant self can follow. Money well spent. They know that I am helpless and pathetic and they are taking mercy on me. This is going to be expensive but it’s worth it to make sure I don’t fuck things up with two governments. Right now I am close to the end of the first cycle. There was a massive list of companies to contact. I think I only have one more that needs first contact and it’s another joint account.

Now I wait and send in documentation when demanded.

I don’t think there is a lot more I can push forward right now. So of course I was twitchy and difficult with the kids. That’s not nice. I was going to lose the ever patient ability at some point.

But I feel like I have more information to go on. I feel like I can see a shape we can learn how to fill.

The Crown has informed me that they do not believe a jury would rule in my favour so they are declining to prosecute my sexual assault. That means I don’t need to plan my whole year around making sure my kids have months of 30+ hours a week in child care.

Oh.

This makes the second government who has decided that I am an unrapeable whore. When men rape me, meh it doesn’t count.

Scotland is better in many ways. In other ways it is just the same. It’s not worse. But in some ways it is just as bad. Hey, fewer guns!

It means I don’t have to keep trying to force the Council to accept my obnoxious request for placement of high needs kids. I can just stop. I can accept help from people who offer it. There are a lot of retired grandparent-like folks who are happy to help us. I need to say yes. I need to start having standing dates for kids around town with folks so they develop relationships.

I also need to fundamentally alter how I react to the idea of scheduling my life. I need to be building in massive buffers of nothing because we are going to have times when we just fucking can’t.

I suppose it is for the best that I am still an unrapeable whore. I don’t have to waste my year on being a good victim. I can work on being a good mother. I won’t be distracted by being a good wife. That was such a massive time commitment in my life. Making sure I paid enough attention to Noah was a serious priority and his desire for attention was vast.

I am starting to realise that I have been going harder than I can sustain. I thought I was pushing until school started. Nope. I’m just… doing this. I need to push less. I need to rest more. I need to cuddle more.

Today’s task list included:

2 calls with solicitors
4 emails to solicitors/lawyers
1 call to obtain old tax returns from old company
1 call with 2 accountants to work towards streamlining my tax situation going forward
filled out the monstrously evil forms for a bank and insurance company. ew much words.
emailed and messaged with 2 people trying to obtain cleaning assistance
sat on chat for 48 minutes in order to figure out how to tell one bank Noah is gone
uploaded a fuckton of documents to banks, insurance companies, government websites
got the plumbing bill and paid it
finally responded to a WhatsApp message after a week
physically filled out a bunch of forms for kid-things
there were a lot more messages and emails about various stages. Most of these things took multiple iterations of coming back to it. I have a lot still in progress.
I negotiated poorly then less poorly with the kids.
We got absolutely plenty of housework done.
poked people who said they wanted to do stuff with kids but haven’t set it up yet.
decided we really need 3 at home days a week to counteract the 4 we have to leave the house

How in the fuck did I think my kids would adjust to school? They barely think a 3 day weekend is long enough to handle 1/4 the stimulation of school. Our life is so very bespoke. We do stuff. We just don’t like a lot of background noise or interference or interruptions. Without Noah’s piano the house is so quiet.

Mostly what I do is try to keep my bursts of sobs to a minimum. Keep moving. There is more to do. Also: I have to rest or I’m going to hurt myself.

Balance is tricky.

I need to build time with local friends into every week. It needs to be a priority. I cannot only be with my children. That’s insane. I can’t only be with their friends–that’s unhealthy. I will say things I shouldn’t because I won’t be able to help myself from loneliness. I need adults to talk to. And not just online or on the phone. I need Meat Life. It matters.

I am so scared and so sad. I miss Noah. I want to wake up from this nightmare. I miss him so much I feel like my heart will crumble into dust.

I’m not doing enough to take care of my exercise needs. It is part of why I am getting pissy. I restart yoga tomorrow. I’ve been to one climb so far. I have cycled 20 miles in the last 7 days. That’s not nothing. I’m not eating enough vegetables. I’m struggling with sleep regulation. I’m waking up super early because then I can masturbate and cry.

Like, this is the most sad, pathetic masturbating of my life. I think of Noah and cry. I feel like I can’t get off. Sometimes I couldn’t until he finished and that is what it feels like all the time right now and he is never going to finish in me again. That feels so unbelievably bad. I keep reaching for him in my sleep. Please be there. Let this be a terrible, vivid dream that shows me how badly my life could go if I am stupid enough to ask you to go ice skating.

Please come back.

You can’t. I know. I have your rings. You only took them off for a few minutes at a time and then you hurried to put them back on. You were so happy to have two. We had a marriage that was a blend of my cheap ass practicality and your highfalutin ways. You insisted on the fancier rings. You said they were my insurance. I have them. They aren’t worth enough to smuggle my family out of the country so I don’t see what kind of insurance they actually are. Not that I’m looking t o get out. I’m just sayin’.

You wanted me to have the experience of walking into Tiffany’s and having the salesclerk go “Oooooooh, that’s real.” I did not know that was a thing that could be determined at a distance. You were elated. You referred back to it many times over the years. See. You put your mark on me. Fancy people look at me and go real. Ok.

Only I will never feel entitled to wear your rings again my love. I am not your wife. I am your widow. It makes me feel so sad. I want you with my whole soul. I want to hear you giggle and see your glee. I want to feel happy again. My love I don’t know what the future is going to bring. I’m scared.

I’m doing all the grown up things you usually do. I’m trying to keep notes. I should go put all of this in your Dropbox. I may fix your shitty organisation finally. Now that it feels less like a really invasive version of needing to face all the bills in your wallet. He was a “searching is faster” guy. I was a “I worked in libraries pre-computers” gal.

Dad did most of the first level of cleaning up Noah’s room. I am so grateful. I went through paperwork. We haven’t fully cleaned it out or changed it for a kid. I think I would specifically like to wait for a day past the one month mark.

This is so much and so little and so hard and so awful. Life will never feel fair again. There is no fair here. Noah, I will miss you for my whole life. You were right that I am not ok without you. I feel like a walking corpse.

The walking part is the important part. Hey, now I can get therapy. Ha, ha, ha.

This is hard.

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There are things I want to document but privacy and security are different things in my life now.

I have:

cancelled Noah’s cell phone contract
updated the electricity company to my information
updated the oil company with my information
sent emails to several people in the council because good golly school registration is not going well
threw myself on the mercy of several different support organisations around town
emailed new accountant to talk through pieces of the hand off
got him off my credit card accounts (two of them)
exchanged emails with the financial advisors about getting everything consolidated as much as possible and all in my name
I made a big fun breakfast for wishing Grandpa goodbye
I checked the oil tank level
I snapped a couple of times because I am really hitting overwhelm with video games

I need to get the kids in school. What we are doing isn’t healthy or sustainable and I don’t have more to give. It is simply the reality of the situation I find myself in. I’ve been trying to contact people for 14 days now. I send messages regularly and then I either get no response or get fobbed off. It’s sounding like there may well be an inability to get placements due to over crowding. That’s going to be fucking festive.

I will deal with that when we have to.

The kids are safe and being played with and interacted with by a wide variety of humans. They aren’t being neglected, but I can’t teach right now. I can’t make them do things. I have to be entirely unconditional acceptance and I have this god damn trial coming.

It’s a lot to ask of my body.

Limbo is the worst

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27 days of waking up without Noah. I haven’t managed to get the kids in school yet. Over the weekend someone sent me an email telling me where I need to get the process started, 11 days after my first email. I think the schools are in the middle of big tests? Not an easy time to integrate a high needs home educated kid.

Do you know how hard I worked for the life that is ending? I spent 10 year preparing to be a teacher before I had kids. Then I spent 16.5 years home educating/being home. I was part of a partnership and we worked together like we were made for each other. Now I am a solo parent and my need to go to school.

I’m holding on by a thin thread right now. The trial is hanging out in the back of my head making me crazy every day. I can’t “educate” on top of barely staying alive right now. My brain won’t cooperate. I can’t focus on them and be entertaining and fun and light so they remember the material. I will scream at them to hurry up and then they’ll remember nothing.

I said we need to finish this year and go through all of next school year and if it isn’t working out I’ll pull Shortie and we can figure out home education together. She will be my only one and we can be more adventurous at her speed without the older “I’m too cool to play” kids along. I’m not getting rid of home ed materials for two years. I’ll decide that in two years when I decide about the house. Exactly two years from *today* there is a note on my calendar.

Ha, the day before my cunt sister turns 58. How can such a waste of skin and cells be here and Noah is not? There is no fair in this life. Wanna know something funny? When my Uncle died the cunt came to me and asked, “Has anyone close to you ever died before?”

Like our brother and father had not both committed suicide like 10 years earlier. Like we hadn’t had a whole series of family friends die. Today I think I know what she meant. Noah’s death hurts more than every other death put together time a million. This feels so much more painful than everything that has ever happened to me. Because this, for the first fucking time, is the death of my hope. I held on to hope by my fingernails all these years. If I worked hard enough my life would get better. I worked so hard.

My life will be better than it is today, someday. I won’t be awaiting a trial. I won’t have as much to do that I hate.

My life will never be better than it was on 23 December, 2024. That was my last truly good day. I went with Noah and the two younger kids to hang with Bestie and her youngest. We rode the Santa VR ride and it was very silly and fun. It was just a day. Noah was hobbling around with crutches but so cheerful with it. He so seldom complained. When he complained I would jump like I’d been electrocuted to go figure out how I could fix something for him.

I was the complainer, not him.

I remember standing with him and watching the kids interact and play. We leaned our head together and he whispered, “We made those.” I said, “I know!” We grinned and nuzzled in for a hug while we watched.

No one will ever look at my children with overwhelming pride with me again. That feels so terrible. When Noah was alive I made a point to avoid “we” language as a parent. Rarely did I say “we think”. Now I just say, “We love you. We are so proud of you.” Now, yeah he’s a monolith of feelings that agree with mine. If you don’t think so, fuck off.

It is hard for people this cool to be children. They have too much sense of self and being controlled while a child sucks.

I am not in a good position mentally or emotionally to home educate. I may not ever be again. Over the years Noah has expanded his portfolio of parenting time to “cover” a lot of the roughly 15 hours we have awake children with high needs. He probably covered a good 6 hours a day with me completely checked out. Between volunteering for organisations in town, Vicki research, art projects, writing, and general body maintenance he insisted on me taking those hours. He wanted me to feel like I had an identity outside of us like he did in the Ruby world.

Now my time is going to be different. I will orient around the school year (that part is actually easy for me). I have never been great about getting up and out the door on time for school. I was publicly humiliated for my poor attendance in schools. I wonder why I didn’t come when every day I went I was hit.

I am not looking forward to the drumbeat of regulation. It is going to mandate that most of my odd habits and patterns be abandoned, at least for a few years. I suspect I have three years ahead of me of needing to walk Shortie. I think the year after that she would start insisting that she’s not a baby and she wants to go alone. It’s not a dangerous walk by any measure. Only one big road to cross and there’s a light.

I will not be able to get into hyperfocus and do one huge project at a time. I am going to have to carefully slice up my day. I think I should spend 2-4 hours a day exercising. That sounds like a lot, but walking Shortie to school will take ~1 hr/day. Cycling to and from town to run other errands will fill close to 45 minutes. A 2 hour minimum is not a lot more than existing for me. I need to get back to taking several yoga classes a week. I should rock climb a couple of times a week–I need the strength in my shoulders desperately. I should start taking weight training seriously. I should cycle on longer routes sometimes just for training–my buddy who lives on the Black Isle can’t drive right now so I need to get over to see her. It’s really easy for a visit to a friend who is mildly out of town to require 3 hours of exercise. Also, gardening.

I am going to be a body in motion. I can’t keep sitting still near Noah. There is no Noah to stay with. There is no Noah to chase me up the hill saying I’d better move faster because he wants athletic sex, thank you. He was working out a lot and he was getting so fit. I loved our life so much. I loved him so much. He was the source of all the joy and good luck and happiness in my life. It all came through him. Yes, I love my kids–but he gave them to me.

I’m starting to get low key upset that everyone but me is having visions/dreams/think they hear him auditory hallucinations. I’m not seeing him. My only dream was trying to dig an enormous tick out of my thigh with just my fingernails. It was not a fun dream.

I am scared that something is coming that I’m going to have to deal with and I would not have been able to get the job done if I was happy. It is only because I am a miserable, lonely motherfucker that I will be able to be of real value. I’m afraid that is going to become my conditional state for entry to the social contract. I don’t like being the “There but for the grace of God go I” person. I hate being inspiration porn. Sometimes people have said things like, “I was really upset about X happening but then I thought of your life and I didn’t feel ok being upset anymore.” Don’t fucking do that. Don’t do that to me and don’t do that to you. We each have our own scale. They aren’t transferable. You bear shit I can’t.

Right now from where I’m sitting, there is the high probability I will keep the house. My kids want to be able to come and go. I want the garden. If the kids are gone I will invite lots of guests over. I’ll do things. I’ll make things. I will be part of a community and it will be lovely.

I will always feel unseen and lonely in my soul. My Perfect Witness to my life has died. Now it all feels like grains of sand running out a hole in the side of a timer. Never again will this unit mark time along with everyone else. Minutes, and later hours and days will vanish and not really exist.

This is my new pain level 10. This is worse than being picked up by your pectoral muscles before being shaken like a dog shakes his toys.

Dad is leaving today and I will miss him terribly. He has been a wonderful companion and helper during this first stage. He is a fantastic Grandpa. He is a completely stress-free house guest. I continue to treasure this friendship. We became friends in 2000. I’m really glad that I have been able to keep him in my life.

Pam’s giant mountain of a man is going home tomorrow. He’s really nice. It’s been incredibly heart warming seeing the two of them be so gloriously in love. Pam is here for another 11 days. I really freaking hope we can get school sorted in that time. I’m also hoping to be done talking to governments, legal people, and financial people. Set it up, knock it down.

I am not going to carry a bunch of work from cleaning up my old job as Noah’s wife forward into my new life. I need to finish and move on. I need to find a rhythm I can keep like a drumbeat.

I need to be the mother I needed to have when my life went sideways and there was a tremendous amount of overwhelming change and pain happening in my life.

Do you know what I watched Noah learn how to do? Take a deep breathe, channel his inner chaos and power into a think he could squeeze smaller with his fingers, then he pushed it down into the center mass of his power to rejoin all of its friends to be recalled later. He wasn’t “stuffing his feelings” he was controlling when it was useful to use them. He was choosing who to share them with. He was choosing when to share them.

That’s a lot of how he managed to have such great mentor energy with every fucking person in the Ruby community. He had a lot to give and he was humble about offering it. I am going to have to take on a lot of Noah’s steadying role. It’s going to be hard. I am used to being allowed to be impulsive to a noticeable degree because I made him be the adult. (He was impulsive in his ways, too. I did adult, too.)

I just don’t know what my safe place to let them out will look like yet. It feels like an endless pool of pain and I am kicking as hard as I can but I can’t keep my face fully above the water line.

Time to go kiss people awake.

Blast from the past

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The carabiner I had with “All About Frank” has finally broken after all these years. That was a good carabiner.

Time to start moving forward

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Today I have an appointment with our solicitor. I need to update my will and remove all DNR language. I am no longer allowed to peacefully and easily when something comes for me. I have to fight like hell. I have to manage chronic conditions and I have to fight cancer no matter how much it hurts. I’m sad about this. I wanted my next near death to be my last. Not anymore.

This was not what I wanted. This was not the outcome I wanted. I didn’t want to have to give up on the idea of a peaceful death because Noah is gone. I am going to spend the entire rest of my life stuck because Noah is gone. It makes me feel so bad that I didn’t have this feeling while he was alive to relish it.

I can’t make my kids orphans.

Today I bug the schools to get enrollment going. I will get over to the Whole Foods collective to get stuff we are running low on. Time to catch up on my bullet journal and figure out what the cheese is happening. Not anything good I had planned. Oh well.

Today is the first day of the rest of my life

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Noah’s funeral was yesterday. It went fine. People were kind. Promises of help were made. Offers of commutative friendship were made. Single parents offered help learning the ropes.

Today I am quiet and withdrawn. I’m scared and I feel like I should be able to jump into action. I can’t. I am exhausted. I have gone totally limp. I need to start the process of becoming unpopular at two schools. I’m going to show up with big asks and schools love that in the middle of the year. I have been that kid a lot of times.

I am so scared that my babies are going to have another rough entry. I think that tomorrow I will send an email in the morning to both schools as a follow up. I can’t today. I really literally can’t. I am so overwhelmed.

I am processing the layers of my loss in fresh waves of horror and grief. Oh goodness Noah, what am I going to do without you? You were the sun I revolved around. Now I have to care for myself instead of off-loading that onerous task onto you. I would much rather look after you in trade.

A fucking broken ankle. Like that’s good for my ambient paranoia about injury.

I feel like I am not able to consider other people very well right now. I feel like my entire theory of mind evaporated. I can kind of do it with the kids, as long as its not all day because then I get overwhelmed. I put on a front and I smiled and hugged everyone at the funeral. I thanked everyone for coming.

Now I am empty and hollow and I just want Noah. I want him to hold me and tell me I did a good job. I want him to tell me that he is proud of me. I miss sex. I miss the way he specifically fucked with my head to make me feel like I was a very good person because of our sex. I feel like I have lost the ability to feel good. Now I feel empty. Not just my vagina. I feel empty in my mind. There are clearly still words, but instead of 6 screens going in the drive through there’s one and the picture keeps flickering and the audio is spotty.

I think my weight is at a plateau.

I was happy I could physically wear the fancy wedding rings Noah insisted on buying. He meant these expensive gestures very well. He wanted me to know that I was worth an investment. I think he was silly. I think we could have paid off the house like five years faster. He wouldn’t hear of it. He insisted on the gestures.

It’s not a set of rings I’ve ever enjoyed wearing every day. They are heavy and they hurt my hand even on the best of days. I am still wearing the plain band. I don’t know when I will take it off. I did fulfill the contract: I stayed until death parted us. I wanted so much more time. I’m scared. I’m scared of who I will never be because I don’t believe in me as much as he did. I’m sad about the things I won’t do because he won’t be there to do them with me.

I am sad that he will never be inside of me again. That was such a massive part of our relationship. I didn’t have very many hours in a day where we didn’t touch each other. We were so excited that this amazing person is willing to let me touch them! I need to prove it again. Over and over, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after decade. The magnetic attraction between us never waned.

I long for Noah with every cell in my body. It’s hard to believe that I will ever feel ok again. I’m having a hard time believing that I have a future that is going to feel like it matters to me. What could ever be important after losing Noah?

What was important to me outside of Noah? I can’t remember. There’s got to be a reason that folks are lining up to take care of me for a year. None of them are coming here because they feel they owe it to Noah. I feel pretty fucking good about insisting on maintaining relationships now. I’m not as stupid as I look.

Walking past little old couples wrecks me. I will never have that. I won’t get to fuss at Noah to stop getting distracted and hurry up.

I feel so empty.

Humbling. That’s the word for the year.

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I know that Noah would be very upset if he knew I used his death as a reason to beat myself up and hate myself. That was not something he wanted at all. He wanted me to like myself as much as he liked me. Like I wanted him to like himself as much as I like him. He never did.

Today I am not going to be able to power through and be strong and upbeat. I feel exhausted to the marrow of my bones. I did not get up and have breakfast on the table by 7 today. I’m letting someone else make food. Luckily I have amazing kids who love to cook.

My baby is now looking for stories about what happens when a parent remarries after losing a spouse. This freaks me out and scare me. I don’t want to bring in a new person so we can “be a family again”. We are a family already.

In the past 7 months I have lost 11 lbs. My waist is 3″ smaller. Every measurement (except for my boobs) has gone down by at least .25″ (calf) or a full inch (almost everywhere else). I really am shrinking away. I am basically the same size, but 4lbs heavier than when I ran my first marathon. I wish I still had all of those clothes. Soon Noah’s jeans won’t be able to stay up well even with a belt.

Another morning, still no hope

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I am angry that I was summoned to the NHS psych department today. I was summoned so I could be told in detail that this tragedy still doesn’t qualify me for support because I am stupid enough to prosecute a rape. This country is barbaric. But, no guns! Homeless people are given housing! They have basic (shitty) health care without going bankrupt! They have lots of water and are not vulnerable to fires, earthquakes, tornadoes, or tsunamis.

Nowhere is all good. I really miss the California therapy culture but as I watch the state go up in flames again I worry a lot that there will not be capacity for supporting all the pain that exists there. I feel lost in my grief. I feel like I am a horrible bitch because I don’t know how to feel love and support from the people who are showing up. I’m going through the motions. I know the role I am supposed to play. I feel empty though. I feel like I will never feel positive emotions again.

I am so scared. I don’t want to talk to the NHS today. It will be degrading and awful. Oh shit, I should call about flowers. Fuck.

I feel awful.

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It’s been 16 days and I am plowing through work as fast as I can. Folks are trying really hard to be helpful but I am not good at being helped. It took so many years for Noah to learn how to help me without setting me off into a rage. My friends are wonderful and I am grateful for their presence. Also: it is hard having people here. It is hard accepting help because people don’t do it how I would. It is hard accepting that I am going to be required to accept help for the rest of my life.

I’m feeling overwhelmed by waves of different flavours of grief. I am really struggling with how much I am only allowed tiny moments of feelings before I have to shove that shit in a box or people will start acting towards me in ways I don’t want.

When I am really upset it is hard that people rush to hug me. I want to fling people away from me. I go hard into the fight reflex and I am required to go still and limp and let other people feel better by hugging me even though it makes me feel sick. It took years for Noah to fully understand that when I am freaking out I want someone to sit near me but not to touch me. I want them out of reach. If it feels like they can reach out and touch me I am going to feel threatened and scared.

I hate that I have to perform sad in the right way. I hate that I have to accept “comfort” that makes me feel alienated and uncomfortable and kind of sick. There are times I want to hug when I am upset and I initiate at those times. It’s why I try so hard to ask people if they want to be hugged.

I am not accustomed to touching people outside my family anymore. It’s not natural at this point. It feels weird and uncomfortable. I still feel like I am wearing the Choke Chain and I am going to get in trouble if I even look at someone too long. It doesn’t matter that Noah told me that part of our relationship was over months ago. He said it and we stayed in our house together and didn’t change anything.

I miss you Noah, I’ll stay in the house with just you forever. Just come back. I was wrong when I thought I needed more than you. I need you. I just need you. My chest hurts so much I feel like I have been hit by a truck. I don’t know how to accept that he isn’t coming back.

I am having a really hard time with this whole “being strong” bullshit. I just want to go to bed for months. I don’t want to think for other people. I don’t want to help people feel like they are helping me. I don’t want to ask for help. I don’t want to be touched. I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want any of the things or options or people who are available. There is a reason I moved to the edge of nowhere to live with Noah far from anyone I knew.

I want Noah.

I hate being me so much. Noah made it bearable. I don’t know how to endure being me for lots more years without him. I don’t want to keep walking the shithole road that is my life. Yes, I have good friends. Yes, I love my children.

How many more rapists are going to come knocking at my door? I am so scared I feel like my head will explode from pain. I am not ok at all. I feel like I will never ever feel ok again. How could I be ok? Noah is gone.

I don’t feel like I have the special place in history that he had. He truly changed the course of a lot of lives. I feel pathetic, useless, and like a burden. It’s fucking humiliating filling in forms here for disability recognition. I’m not even trying to get treatment. I want the bitches to admit on paper that I am in intense pain and dramatic emotional stress every fucking day and that way I will have a UK medical record.

It is humbling having to list out all the ways Noah took care of me. I have no idea how I will survive. My life will contract and then contract again and then contract again. Whoever I had the potential to be will shrivel up like a raisin in the sun.

Noah, how could you ever fucking think I wished for your death? I didn’t want to ever live through a day without you in the world.

It’s almost like you knew that I would need a much younger tether because you knew you couldn’t outlive me. There are so many lines to be drawn between his actions in the past and this outcome. It’s like he knew how to trap me into living as long as physically possible. He stole my ability to commit suicide. I can’t ever leave these people on purpose; the cowards route is not open to me.

I am a coward though. And a weakling. And pathetic.

Noah, I am so sorry for the ways I took you for granted. I’m sorry I skipped any days of having sex. I have never before wanted to relive part of my life so I could do it better. I’ve always believed it was hard enough once. I would go back when it comes to you. If I could go back to March of 2006 I would do the whole thing differently. I’m not sure it would be better in the long run. I would have destroyed myself trying to give to you because I would not have paced myself. Maybe we wouldn’t have had kids. Maybe we wouldn’t have stayed married. I don’t know.

I just know that I miss you so much I feel like my soul is crushed under a glacier. Noah I miss you. I want you so much. You are the only one I want to have touch me. It makes other people feel better to hug me so I will accept it anyway. It doesn’t really matter. I don’t think I can feel better so maybe I shouldn’t try. I hurt so much. Time to sleep.

Keep moving

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Waking up for the 12th day of Noah being gone. It’s a weekend; the last weekend before I have to sign the kids up for school. Middle Child is very confident they are going to ride through the rest of secondary school because getting qualifications will simplify later life. Shortie isn’t sure about school. She is scared. I told her that we are going to try through the end of the next school year and if she has not settled, then we will discuss a return to home education. Eldest Child has plans and he is figuring out his forward facing routine. He is scared but ready to figure out his future.

The older kids are scared I will sell the house. They are really overwhelmed by this idea. That means I need to be careful with that option. It has to be only at absolute last resort. I think I am going to need to work very hard to keep this house. I think the kids are going to need that stability for a long time to come. This was our final home with Noah. Leaving here is choosing to leave him behind. I’m not sure we will ever be ready for that. We will make the decision in two years but the kids are acting like it would be a problem if we left. I need to consider that.

I love him so much. I am going to have a rough road. Missing him is going to be a blessing and a curse for the rest of my life. I’m going to know how much I was loved and I am going to know how much I lost. Even if it isn’t my fault it is my loss to deal with. It is a loss for my children to deal with. I am going to have to push my babies forward alone with no one adding to my bucket.

I feel bad because there are so many thoughts in my head that will never be spoken again. I won’t ever believe anyone cares. It makes me feel lonely in my soul. Sure, yeah, I will talk out loud to Noah but it’s not the same. It’s going to make me feel very disconnected from life that I am only safe talking to myself alone in a room.

Tomorrow is when we were supposed to wake up to go on our holiday alone after the aborted negotiation with TB. I don’t even know if TB is in the country. I don’t care. He poisoned that well this year when he told me he didn’t need to be upset about me being raped because I wasn’t his wife. That’s disgusting and nauseating.

I really do wonder if I am going to turn into my mother and just give up sex. Either that or I will cause problems. I struggle with believing I will find a healthy medium. I’m used to having sex every day, often two or three times a day. I can feel in my body that it is not happening and my body is not pleased. I would be literally pawing at Noah by now if for some reason I hadn’t jumped him already this morning.

It is hard going back to bed after my early morning trip to the bathroom. That’s when I would get excited every single morning because I could wake Noah up for sex. He would warm me back up from the chill of the bathroom and the process would lead into melting together.

Yeah. Last night was the last night a person who snores can be in my bed. I love you with my whole soul Pam but I need to be able to go back to sleep at 1am. I can’t lay awake for hours listening to snoring and thinking about how much I am scared. It’s not healthy. I need to be able to go back to sleep.

I had someone who wanted to know about every weird gurgle and blip in my body. Someone who wanted to know every discomfort because maybe he could help. He could help in so many ways. I am overwhelmed with sadness. I want to take care of him. He was so delighted with the ways I am confident. He made me feel special. Pam and Dad are trying hard to get me to feel special.

It’s not working very well. I feel like I failed the boss level at life. I didn’t protect Noah. I hurt inside my soul. Noah, I am so sorry. Noah I am sorry for every time I didn’t do what you deserved.

The only way I can continue in his service is to give our kids a good life. That starts with the building block of sleep.

Shortie and I were talking about that last night. She was annoyed because all the grown ups are harping on her to go to sleep. She was complaining about how it is stupid because sleep doesn’t do anything anyway. I told her she was so wrong and I started explaining what sleep does for your brain and body. It’s necessary for learning, growing, and healing. She asked a lot of follow up questions. She is so clever that it is really uncanny at times.

I am scared that she is going to end up being the kid who is most like me. Middle Child is firmly in the PDA camp with me and I’m absolutely certain beyond all measure that Shortie is too. When she is asked to do something she responds with snarls and a vicious physical retaliation if you physically try to push her into something. I’m going to have to talk to the school. She always comes back and apologises for these rapid bursts of emoting. That’s not how she wants to act it is just instinctive and utterly compulsive. If you have compassion for her and deescalate without taking it as a challenge then things can smooth right out. She is not mean or vindictive or unwilling to help. She has a really strong automatic anxiety reaction to being ordered about. I can’t judge.

She has also taught herself to read at 6. My other kids did not do that. She’s far further into maths than her siblings were at her age because she finds it fun and engaging. She is more than halfway through the elementary curriculum set I have. I’m a little worried that she is going to be advanced enough to really struggle in school. Or maybe they will let her read like I did?

I’m scared on so many levels. I’m scared of so many things. I’m sad. I feel this horrifyingly swelling well of sadness and depression. I want Noah and I will never have him again. Noah was my life, my happiness, my home. This house is just a building for me. My home was him being inside of me. It was the only way I ever felt fully secure. That is gone. I never get to feel like that again. I miss him.

I will keep going though. I have to. The older kids are processing in waves what it means that their dad is gone. My baby is flailing and uncertain and having all the feelings. I can’t be mean to her about the way she is feeling. I love the bones of her. That’s a thing I’m worried about–she is losing weight and that’s not ok. She’s already extremely slender. I can’t give on the candy front because she is super compulsive but I need to massively bend on controlling her food. She is so much like me and she struggles with digestion stuff because her diet isn’t varied enough. Right now I need to give her a lot of leeway around picking stuff that can give her what she needs. Mostly I need to stock my kitchen with stuff she is welcome to have at any minute and encourage grazing. She’s not great at meals.

It was worth arguing over when it was our biggest issue. It isn’t anymore. Survival is. I’m not giving up on the process of helping her learn to eat more food but I am going to push less.

I have to go limp in a lot of ways. A lot of things I would normally correct or criticise I can’t for the next 6+ months. I am waking the kids up every day and having chats with each of them or singing a cheerful song. Everyone gets a private moment with me to start the day. We are also touching base later in the day for directed attention outside of group stuff.

I have to take care of them. I am who they get to have. I think that sucks for them and is really unfair but it’s true.

I’m struggling with my shame around having chosen to have kids when I struggle so much with mental illness. When I had Noah to cover my fuck ups it felt more justifiable. Now I have to regulate myself more than I ever have in my entire life. That’s really hard. I have to do it while struggling with the worst things that have happened to me in decades. I believe they are worth the effort and I need to put my money where my mouth is.

I know that it isn’t healthy for me to spend the rest of my life living for my children. I’m pretty sure it is healthy for the next year. Maybe that’s all I can handle thinking about right now. Maybe I am not able to think past that to what will come in the next chapter of my life. I don’t actually want another chapter. I liked the one I was in. Noah. I miss you, Noah.

But it’s over. Life isn’t fair. There is no such thing as fair. No one gets what they deserve.

For a time I had Noah. It was really wonderful.

Frozen hell

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I’m going to have a hard time crawling out of the hole in which I believe his death is all my fault. Noah being gone feels like the end of hope, joy, love, and being cared for in this life. I lost it because I didn’t protect him enough. I let his fragile body be damaged. I loathe every aspect of myself. I pushed him too hard. I am a monster.

Is it actually all my fault that his body gave out? No. I am not in charge of the cells in other peoples bodies. However, if it’s all my fault then I deserve to be punished and that feels like the only justice possible given what happened to Noah. I deserve to be punished for the rest of my life because I didn’t keep him alive. My life will be a punishment of its own. I will not have Noah.

11 days without Noah. The longest we have gone without seeing each other since we got married was 6 weeks. I think that happened one time on the road trip. Usually we didn’t go longer than 3 weeks on that trip and never longer than a week and a half since. We don’t like being apart. We have never liked being apart.

I miss Noah so much. I have no idea how I will ever recover from this.

There is only pain, there is no hope.

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Today is the 9th day I am waking up without Noah. It hurts so much and I feel like I will explode with pain. I am grateful that Pam and Shortie are still sleeping with me but someday very soon that is going to probably change. I need to start getting up and getting moving in the morning absurdly early in order to have breakfast on the table before the kids go to school. Breakfast and dinner are big events in our house. We all have intense dietary needs and we take care of one another by sharing meals of good food.

Good here is going to get increasingly neurotic because I can’t get sick and my kids need to be able to be physically well enough to withstand school and we have to cook for ourselves because very few places around here put vegetables forward in the ways we require. We are all losing weight; it’s clear as the nose on my face.

All of us improved our relationships with Noah over the past year. The older two got a lot closer to him in 2024 because he had so much time for us. He played with Shortie every single day. He and I alternated between having uncomfortable conversations and having the best sex of our lives. I really felt like we were growing together in a way that would have paid off for decades.

Noah, how could you leave me? I am freaking out. I keep walking in circles flapping my hands and beating on my chest. Noah, how could you go? You said you wouldn’t leave me. Noah I need you. You are right. I will never be ok without you. There is no one but you for me. Yeah, I wanted to fuck other people for momentary distraction but no one ever crawled into my heart and mind and soul the way you did. Now they aren’t a distraction they are a reminder that I can’t have you and I don’t want anyone else. Not really.

I mostly wanted to think about other people because the end result every time was being grateful for you and feeling extra lucky because you are so much better than everyone else. Smarter, kinder, more diligent, more devoted–Noah you were the best of everything and my body cries out for you night and day. My hand moves under the covers to find the body next to me then recoils because it is not you.

I no longer think the phantom pain in my vagina is a bad thing. I hope it lasts forever as my payment for not being a good enough wife, for not taking care of Noah well enough. I want to be in pain every single moment I am alive. It is all I deserve for not making sure Noah survived longer than me.

I don’t believe I deserve to feel good ever again. I lost Noah. He was my reason for everything. He is why I worked so hard to be better; because Noah believed I could. Noah spent a lot of time doing hypnosis on me trying to change my brain. How am I ever supposed to feel good again when the thing that made me feel like I was good was putting my mouth on Noah’s body. I could kiss his hand or his foot and I felt like I was good. It was even better when I put my mouth in other places. His joy was my joy. His happiness was my happiness. I am so glad that I pushed for all the sex we had towards the end.

I am freaking out about my future now. It’s been hazy and cloudy and unclear for me for a long time–I had nothing to work towards. Now that feeling is magnified times a billion.

I actually had a lot I was looking forward to. Noah was growing ever closer to me and we were spending so much time together. We fit like perfect pieces in a puzzle with our kids. We created a world together. We traveled the world together. We had so many adventures yet to come. We were such a happy family. I’m really scared that it all came from Noah and that time is over.

Noah was an avid photographer; I am not. I am going through 20 years of photos and only finding a few hundred of him while there are many many thousands of everyone else. That made me feel really bad for a few minutes but then I realised: the reason we were always smiling so big was because we were looking at Noah. He was the one who wanted the shrine of pictures as motivation; we just needed him. Him being part of the family was enough to keep us working and pushing forward.

In perfect love and perfect trust I tried to take care of him. I failed. If I had not been so depressed lately he would have opted out of ice skating. He would have said it would be no fun for him. But he wanted to be there to support me. I feel so ashamed of the way I only focused on our daughter and not on the pain and distress he was feeling. I feel so guilty that I wasn’t with him to help him not fall on the ice. I should have been. I knew he wasn’t comfortable and that the boot was already hurting his foot. There was too much pressure. I should have told him to sit out the activity. Jenny’s husband did. Why didn’t I fucking tell him to go sit with the other dad and not participate?

Because I am selfish and stupid and I thought I knew best. “Exercise is good for you.” Maybe it isn’t always. Noah wouldn’t be dead if he hadn’t gone ice skating. I’m not in any way upset with the friend who invited me. He came because of me. He wouldn’t have gone on that generic family outing if I wasn’t such a pathetic crybaby that he came so he could take care of me.

I’m having a hard time being around people. I’m not comfortable around people. I believe I have no value to anyone outside my family so being out in public is a rude thing to do. People don’t want me here.

I know it is actually a very small percentage of the population that is anti-immigrant and anti-American but they are pretty fucking loud. I got asked to leave the bike group over the summer. I’m now freaked out about any other community stuff I’ve been doing.

2024 was a fucking brutally hard, nightmare of a year. And it’s going to be the last good year of my life because I had Noah.

I’m going back through stuff Noah has been writing lately, Jesus we are both obsessed with our death being imminent. His actually was though and it is horrifying looking at date stamps and seeing how much it feels like we fucking knew it was coming. It is making me shake to the core of me. I felt like I didn’t deserve to have him. And I lost him.

It’s an accident. It’s fate. It is the only inevitable outcome of life.

It is not fair.

There is no fair.

Ted never predicted that I’d have a long happy marriage. He said I would win in court; he said I would never be poor again. Maybe it was not in my destiny to deserve Noah for more of my life. I wasn’t good enough at cherishing him when I had him.

I am scared of the ways I have hurt myself in the past that were blocked by Noah’s presence in my life. Without Noah the chance that I will go do stupid stuff is really high. The chance that I will put myself in a dangerous position is stupidly high. This is absolutely terrifying. Noah has been taking care of me in a lot of ways. He has done a lot to keep me safe in the past 18 years. I am deeply afraid of what I will do without him in my life.

I am expecting to be celibate until my youngest is close to legal age here. It would be deeply unwise for me to get into any kind of NRE situation before then. It would not be great for my parenting. I would act like my sister and that’s not ok. I need to reiterate this to myself a few thousand times. I never get to act like my sister.

I am so scared. Noah, I have only been ok because of you.

I wish we had put the Santa Barbara painting in your room instead of down here in the apartment. You should have been looking at this. I am sorry.

I am sorry for a trillion reasons. I was never as good to you as you deserved. You earned so much more. I am sorry. I am sorry for my pettiness and selfishness. I am sorry for my neurosis and depression. I am sorry I spent any minutes thinking about anyone but you. I was really enjoying the way you were specifically crawling into my head to try to change that part of me at the end. You finally felt like you had the right.

Noah you are right, I will not be ok. I will be a husk. I will be an empty shell, all that is left of a cockroach.

I miss you. You were everything to me. I will get the kids launched into the world. I will do that. I will help them build the kinds of networks we built, the relationships and friendships that carried us through. I will feel empty the whole time. I wanted what we had. I loved how much time we spent together. I loved being ever more enmeshed with every passing year. I loved that we were stunted trees that leaned until we found each other and then together we reached for the light.

Noah, I don’t want to feel better. I want to be feeling shitty but be doing it next to you. Noah don’t leave me.

How can you be gone?

I’m really scared.

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Noah and I have been writing intense long things to each other for most of this year. We did it in a walled garden. I’m rereading big chunks of it and feeling like absolute garbage. I was not as good as he deserved. I did not serve him in the ways he was owed and I feel so much shame. I feel self indulgent and pathetic and weak and unworthy of the glory that is sharing Noah’s life.

I lost it. There are nine million “what if’s” that could have changed this and every single one is beating in my head. I am so sorry, Noah. I don’t know how I will ever feel joy again. You were my joy. You were the center of my heart. You were my partner and my companion and the only one I had to care about pleasing in any way. You were so easily pleased. I loved pleasing you.

I wanted to spend the rest of my life gardening while you played the piano with the window open. We hit the fucking lottery. We were there. Our time was starting. And a perfect storm of stupid things mean you are dead. I am alone. I do hear your voice in my head but I sincerely doubt I will ever find a way to be ok with another human. I can’t. I lost the best one because I was stupid and I didn’t bubble wrap him enough. I shouldn’t have asked him to go ice skating. I shouldn’t have ignored him and left it to be his problem when he told me the boot was too tight and it was hurting the top of his foot. He didn’t have fun. He went for me and I was a jerk and I didn’t help him. I focused on making our daughter have a good time instead because I didn’t feel I could handle them both.

I am a selfish piece of shit and I hate me so much.

I am making sure your babies eat. Yes, including vegetables. Today I said I needed some time alone. Noah I am so sorry for everything. I’m sorry I invited that man to have dinner with our family so that he wrecked this part of our year. Hell, maybe you wouldn’t have died because all the rest of it wouldn’t have happened.

I feel like I have done everything wrong for a very long time. I did not make the choices that guaranteed me all the time with Noah. I fucked up the calculus.

The fact is that he died and it was a ridiculous odds loss and he was a grown up that picked all of the things that happened to him. But I am the daughter of alcoholics and that means that everything is always my fault.

I loved him so much. I loved his too muchness and his brashness and his silliness and his cruelty and his selfishness. I loved his relentlessness. He was so much. He could suck all the oxygen out of a room before replacing it an instant later. He made everyone sparkle and shine. He was good at making people feel interesting.

My chest is burning because it feels wrong for me to breathe if Noah can’t share the oxygen. I want to give to him so much it is ripping me apart.

I don’t need to keep designing my garden so there are hiding places for us to have sex. Well, that simplifies my needs. There are a million things on my list of “do for Noah” and now they are all coming to a stop. I don’t need to have a fucking subscription order for foot shaving tools. We will spend almost no money on alcohol and our food budget is going to go down a lot.

I have started cancelling your monthly recurring stuff. I’m so freaked out. I feel like I am editing you out of the world and it feels morally wrong. Hell, rebuilding rails just came up for renewal. I’m paying that one and letting it work until it stops working. Maybe one of the kids can figure out how to operate it.

I don’t want to.

It was hard shoving myself into the size of box that fit you but it was a good kind of hard. It wasn’t easy and sometimes it chafed but I knew so much happiness with you. Yes, I still suffered from all my shit, but I wasn’t alone. I trusted you enough for you to be the person who got to see me behind closed doors. All of me. You are the only person I trust to really love and want me. You looked for me like water in the desert. I did the same.

Then I lost you.

Noah, how could you leave me?

It’s been a hellish week.

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I can’t believe that a week has passed already. It feels like a day. It feels like 10 years. I feel like there is no sense of time at all. I am in a fog. I am dizzy all the time and I feel like I’m going to hurt myself terribly pretty much any minute. My life is going to get so small. I am going to stay home where I can butt scoot up and down stairs because I don’t feel stable.

I am so scared. Noah has been my bulwark in this life. I don’t want to face the world without him. It sounds horrible and awful and unfair in ways I don’t even know how to wrap my brain around. There are so many tiny what if’s. If he hadn’t broken his ankle. If he hadn’t had surgery. If he hadn’t taken medication. If If If If If If.

There is no fair when it comes to death. Even if someone lives a long time, that doesn’t mean their death is just. Maybe it should have come 50 years earlier and it is no fair that it waited so long.

I have never before noticed how well suited to keening the name “Noah” is.

I have no hope for my future. It will get smaller and more painful with every passing year. I will struggle on to raise my babies. I don’t think I can promise them companionship in their old age. I hope they will forgive me when I need to join their father. I miss Noah. I don’t want to live without him. I will. I have to. I don’t have a choice. I will raise our babies and I will ensure they are as stable and resilient as possible when they become adults but I am broken. This was my chance at a happy family.

I will always know that once I was loved. Once I was loved to distraction and beyond. Once I was everything to one person. He walked through fire for me over and over. In contrast I’m just going to have to keep moving in a frozen hell of pretended normal life. I will never be like everyone else and it doesn’t matter. I will go through the motions of a life but I will be watching through a screen.

I no longer have Noah justifying my existence and writing me permission slips to be in rooms. I no longer have the fact that Noah loves me more than everyone else in the whole world combined to make me feel like I am ok; maybe I am even good. If someone as wonderful as Noah would pick me maybe I am not all bad? If someone like Noah would decide that I was worth working like a demon for to ensure my safety? Maybe I’m not worthless?

Now Noah is gone. The vast majority of our money is tied in up accounts I can’t touch till I’m 67. Once I hit 67, I am set. That’s 24 years in between. I have 11 years, a month, and 14 days until I am done having a minor child. I don’t know yet, but I think we will get child support money from social security in the US. There’s the bank shares money that comes in every year. There is life insurance money. There are Noah’s parents. I’ll bridge the gap; I think.

I never fucking wanted to be a rich widow. This is not why I invested money. I invested money so I could take care of Noah. I was making sure Noah would be safe as he rode out his old age. That’s what I was doing. I am going to keep it and use it to take care of his babies.

We will have fun in the future. We will have adventures. We will explore. We will learn and grow. We aren’t going to stop. Noah would never forgive me if I stopped or if I didn’t push his kids to keep going. We will fucking go. I will be the motor for a long time until they are launched.

Do I want to live that long? 24 years without Noah? Oh my god that makes me shake so hard. Noah. Noah I need you. How could you go? How could you let your body stop? How could something so small stop you?

How could a cockroach like me be the last one standing? I may wobble and look like shit when I walk but I’m mother fucking cruising on like I can’t be stopped.

I wished I believed in Gods so that I could believe that the suffering in my life was because they chose me for punishment for some reason. That I think I could honestly wrap my head around and respect.

Why in the fuck was I so driven to have children? Why wasn’t I happy with just Noah? I am feeling absolutely overwhelmed with grief and I am very upset that suicide is not something I can consider. Every time the thought tries to start “I want to” there is a glitch. No. That is no longer something that is available to me in this life. My children have suffered enough. I can’t want that. Not even in the privacy of my mind, never again. I have to honor Noah.

I have so many regrets right now. I am drowning in them. Did I really serve him as well as he deserved? He never got to be the complete sole focus of my attention and I regret that so much. If I had known that I would have such a short time with him, what choices would I have made?

He died for stupid reasons. He died because everyone has to die. He died because when you read statistics about what could happen if you have surgery or take medication or or or or or or or you never think that one in a million death will be you today. Noah got a higher than average number of lottery ticket wins in this life. His luck ran out.

I don’t particularly want to keep breathing if I won’t have Noah to hold me. I will though. I will keep breathing and eating and sleeping and moving. I will raise my children well. I will earn them sitting by my bedside someday with smiles when I am sick enough that I am allowed to go see their dad. I miss you, Noah.

I know exactly which hangdog expression he would make when I cry, “You weren’t supposed to leave me.” He hangs his head and says, “I know.”

We don’t get to choose what happens to us. There is no deserve. There is no fair in this fuckhole I call life.

I am so angry that a fucking rapist wrecked the last 5 months of my marriage. I have been so fucked up. Noah has been doing work all day almost every day taking care of me and trying to help me calm down. I feel like I let him down by being so weak. I should have been giving to him.

I am trying to think of all the accommodations I am going to need to ask for: like I need Shortie’s teachers to see me write down the things they need me to know in the notebook I am carrying around. If I don’t write it down I cannot be trusted to remember it. Assume I am incapable of forming new memories for the next while. I am going to be in a deeply dissociated state most of the time.

There is a reason I am asking visitors to be spaced out over time. I am worried about my ability to fully stay in the present tense and an outside adult forces me back into reality. This is not a constant problem, but it has been a problem over the last five months and I expect it to get much worse. I am actually literally afraid of being alone right now. I am afraid I will take myself outside in 0 degree weather and stay for hours. Not smoking, just sitting outside until I hurt myself.

I don’t think I’d push it all the way to damage.

I know I won’t if someone is here with me. I am grateful to the friends who are volunteering. I hope this actually works out. I’m scared. The future looks so terribly bleak. For a time I was the most important person in the world to the best man I’ve ever met.

Now I am just a cockroach who won’t fucking die.

I’m not ok

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I miss you, Noah. I am trying to get things done. I am in motion basically every minute because I am afraid that if I stop I will crumble and be unable to get up.

I am so sad. I wish I had died instead of you. I wish I could take your place. If one of us needs to die now, why wasn’t it me? I do not have the purity of soul that you have. The world loves you more than it does me.

I feel sad that the Ruby community around the world is shocked with grief. Your impact is so big. They don’t care that you aren’t there to do the work. You made people feel seen, loved, and important. Like you did for me.

There is no fair in this life. You were the best of us and you are gone. My soul is screaming in agony. I want to want to die. I want to feel so suicidal I don’t care about the pain I will cause my children.

I can’t though. Every time I try to think “I want to die” the thought short circuits in my brain. I can’t ever want that again. I am going to live forever. There is no one to help my kids if I go. Yeah, I have friends who would take them in and not leave them on the streets and they’d have enough money to be ok starting out in life. If our net worth was divided between the kids they would all get close to a million and my in-laws would round that up very soon.

They don’t need money. They need someone who can say every day, “I love you and you still have a future ahead of you full of love, happiness, fun, and belonging. You will find friends and romantic partners and you will have a whole life. I will help you get there.”

I just no longer believe that I have a happy future. My happiness died with Noah. I feel so bad. Noah, how could you leave me?

He’s gone and I will never be ok again.

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What I am doing is making sure my kids are ok. That’s it. I got them out of the house into time with supportive folks so I could strip Christmas from the house. The older two have already told me that they are not ok with us decorating next year.

I’m deep in the regret stage I can list 9 million what ifs that don’t result in me losing the only person who has ever consistently shown up and cared for me. There are a lot of people who have shown up at times. I am deeply lucky like that. Pam will be here in 13 hours. It’s a good thing.

Do you know what isn’t going to be the same cost/reward ratio going forward? Writing. For about 20 years I’ve been writing for Noah. He was my ideal reader. He was the person I most wanted to share my thoughts with.

My smallest one is telling me about how she is going to grow up to be like her dad: happy and joyful the vast amount of the time. This is a big change from the grumpy butt she often is. I told her that she is going to have all the feelings as often as she needs to happen and that is a good thing. She conceded that she will have other feelings, just like her dad did, but he chose to be happy and joyful because that is who he wanted to be and so does she.

When I cried just a little as I climbed into bed she told me, “You are safe. I am here with you.”

I sucked back that sob and said the same back to her. She relaxed into me and went to sleep.

It is remarkable that all of my children have embraced, “This hurts but we will keep walking and we will be ok.” We are roleplaying how to handle different situations that will come up at school. We are talking about how to not piss people off all the time and get hit. For the first time in my fucking parenthood I am saying with my whole heart, “If you know all the answers for the love of Cheese don’t raise your hand every time. Wait until no one else raises their hand, then you do it.” Don’t draw too much attention to yourself. When someone uses a word you don’t know, calmly and with curiosity ask them what it means. You are going to actually learn how to speak Scottish now! This is exciting! When they tell you a funny/clever one compliment them on their fun usage of language.

Don’t go looking for fights.

I went and saw a doctor yesterday. She told me that I could have benzodiazepine or melatonin for sleep because nothing else exists. Yeah. Neither is an appropriate choice for me to lean on as heavily as I would need to lean on something to sleep right now. I’m not going to sleep well at night. Frankly as long as this continues I should use as much time that the kids are in school to nap as I can.

I’m shaking all of the time. I’m being hooked up with bereavement support. I wish I thought it would help me. I think this is going to turn into another time where I am a bad person if I share any details about my past. I think it is going to end in me feeling more isolated and alone.

One of my ex’s is hitting on me and it makes me feel sick.

He got what he wanted. After the kerfluffle in 2016 he had permanent monogamy with me. I wish I could have given him a lot more years.

We touched each other all the time. We were both in the house most of the time and we’d walk past each other and trail a finger, or lean, or kiss, or wipe a cheek on one another hundreds of times a day. Even with how much contact the kids need I feel completely touch starved because I only need one person’s touch and I will never get it again.

It is so clear in my mind that I am not allowed to blame myself because then I would be a bad mother. It’s not my fault. There were a series of places where Noah made choices that should have been fine only they weren’t and if I try to take responsibility I will drive myself mad. This was a terrible accident. People die. I miss him so much.

Noah made a lot of choices in this life. Some of them worked out and some didn’t. That is the summation of a human life.

Soon I think I will need to pull back hard from social media. I can no longer sustain the level of typing I do since I don’t live with an in-house massage therapist.

I wanted to spend the rest of my life worshiping his body and telling him how grateful I was that picked me. He had gotten fucking fit over the past two years of us exercising together more. It was a wonderful body to worship. Every part of us fit so well. I liked where my head hit his shoulder. I liked how we lined up when we were in bed. I miss grabbing him and saying, “Mine.”

Combined with the rape abreactions that are still happening I feel deeply scared and out of control in my body. It doesn’t matter how I feel; it matters how I act.

One of my friends is setting up weekly knife/axe throwing with my son as a specific way to get him out of the house and into a relationship with an adult man. I have told him that he has to start doing things out of the house every week many days a week. Without Noah in this house we aren’t a full and complete ecosystem. We have to go meet other people and make more connections.

It’s remarkable how little I needed other people when I had Noah. He was everything.

Middle child is both looking forward to and dreading school. I think it will be ok. They really want to go do drama with people every day. I think that is a wonderful idea. Noah and I both loved theatre in high school.

I am going to start implementing a move towards school timing immediately because it will be an adjustment. My life is going to become very small and very routine and very rigid because it has to be. When they are at school I will exercise and garden. My mother in law is insisting I get weekly house cleaners; given that she is supporting me for the rest of my life, fine.

I did not cultivate a relationship with my in laws because I was preparing for this. It makes the kids feel better. I think it even made Noah feel better. I gave him a way to have a relationship with his parents that made him feel connected but not smothered. I am proud of that.

I wanted to see what would happen if Noah and I made children together. They are amazing and wondrous. This is going to be a big painful loss but we will walk on. He taught us to be strong. He showed us endless resiliency. He really was joyful and happy most of the time. And we were all such surly bastards so much of the time. I don’t think we will keep falling into that trap.

I told my Shortie that when someone does something and she has to think of how to respond she can think, “What would Daddy do?” Because he would tell a joke or be silly or lighten the mood–he wouldn’t pick a fight. That was not his way. He wasn’t a fighter. He was someone who wanted people to feel special and loved.

I would know better than anyone else.

It’s the end of the world as I know it

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I don’t feel fine. Noah died on Christmas Eve. My world is shattered. I don’t know that I’ll ever feel ok again.

I want to be open.

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So here’s the thing: bad things are going to keep happening. 2024 was not a great year. I had surgery. Noah had surgery. I was sexually assaulted. Noah had a bursitis issue. My body has been well into melt-down/burn out for some time and my physical pain issues are ridiculously high.

When I felt this bad in California I had to keep working and driving. I saw a chiropractor, an acupuncturist, and a massage therapist nearly every single week in order to function. Now, I don’t function very well. I get the absolute basics done but that’s it and there is no way I would be safe to drive. I had a really intense conversation with myself when my California license was expiring. I had a few options. I could ask a friend to let me lie and change my address so I could get a new California license. Some folks have offered in the past. I could work harder to get a UK license, which would be the correct choice of course.

If I had a license I would feel compelled to use it. I would feel required to make other peoples lives better by using cars more. When I think of how much worse it often got in California because of all the driving? I thank my lucky fucking stars that I have reduced the stress on my life enough that I can control a flare this bad with yoga classes and careful pacing of exercise.

I haven’t seen any kind of physical support person since before my surgery and that was almost half a year ago. I am doing so much better physically than I used to do. I could be doing better if I had more support but that will always be true and I will not have the support so get on with it.

I can only do what I can do from this house. I don’t particularly want to move. The medical care in this city will be limited for the rest of my life. So I can’t drive. I can’t bear the strain.

I gave up having a license after 20 years of having a car meaning freedom and independence. I have lived in cars for a couple of years in non-contiguous spread out periods, never longer than 7 months at a stretch. In a real way giving up my license is giving up my normal Plan B for where I can go in an emergency.

I gave up on getting a license here after not trying very hard to start with.

That means my life will be necessarily small as I won’t ask someone else to do all the travel. That closes a lot of doors all by itself. I want to form relationships with people who live within approximately 5 miles of my house. That’s a significant limit.

I want to be open to the universe, to adventure, to opportunities but it feels like I am being closed down in ever increasing steps and it is weighing heavily on me. In a way the issue of increasing disability dovetailing with a reduction in financial status is convenient. I no longer have to consider how to manage all that disposable income. It’s simple: I don’t have it. I think I did well with it when I had it (paid off debts, built long-lasting wealth) and I think it will be ok to get off that train.

I don’t have to keep working like my life depends on it. Is that fair to embrace when everyone else does have to work in unhealthy ways to survive? There is no fair. There is no deserve. Life is unfair in every fucking way. Me working or Noah working to earn money so that we can justify the capitalist machine grinding people to dust is kinda weird. We can survive without giving our life to companies that make us miserable.

Why in the fuck should we try hard to stay in that? We do need to find ways to be part of community here, but why does it have to involve enriching someone else with our time? Because eat the rich. If we are honest about our life then we sure look like targets. Meh. When have I not been a target?

I want to be open to what comes in life. I don’t want to go forward with a specific size and shape and shopping list of what it needs to look like. I have so many limits. Creating more arbitrarily seems like a recipe for failing at life.

Too many feelings.

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I am feeling a lot of pain and isolation. I am struggling with how paranoid I feel. I make the assumption every time I leave my house that someone is going to be hostile or nasty. I get a surprising amount of random verbal abuse. Other people hear it–I am not delusional or paranoid.

I started 2024 with so much hope. I had big plans for working hard and contributing to communities. In the end I am isolated, lonely, and I feel deeply excluded. I feel wounded to my core by being asked to stop coming to cycling events. That was the vanilla community I invested in the most since moving. Now I feel like I am dirty and bad and I hurt people by existing near them.

I’m sorry I made you feel like a bad mother because I was willing to defend your gay kid and you weren’t. That wasn’t my intent. You weren’t in my thoughts at all. Your kid was. And that means I’m not welcome anymore.

I’m scared of the queer community now. The fact that basically no one from the organisation committee is checking on me feels fucking vile. I was raped on the final night of a month long spree of events where I personally produced 28 events. (Some cancelled due to illness so I didn’t hit 30.) That feels like evidence that I did not make any friends this Pride.

The NHS told me that I’ve already gotten so much therapy that I shouldn’t need anymore and if I do I can’t apply until I still have symptoms months after the trial. Fuck if it doesn’t seem like the *plan* is to avoid prosecuting rape/sexual assault cases by being so unsupportive the victims commit suicide. From where I’m sitting that looks like THE PLAN. It’s a lot cheaper that way

Noah fell and broke his ankle. He needed surgery. It was a little bit stressful figuring out when the surgery would happen. The NHS really does act like people are just waiting around at liberty to jump whenever they are called. It’s quite different to interact with.

I feel increasingly certain that I made the right decision in cutting things off with Travel Boyfriend. He was not acting like my friend. I feel less anxious. I feel less like I am supposed to be trying harder to win approval. Instead I am back to exhausted lethargy. Anxiety is a motivating emotion. I don’t want to be running on anxiety all the time though. I’d like to actually feel ok.

I know that EMDR would help a lot. I feel deeply upset that I was told no and that I can wait for years. It makes me feel substantially more out of control, helpless, and like I don’t get to be in control of my body.

I wish I felt like I had energy. I have a lot of things I want to do but no ability to focus my body or my brain. I’m in a lot of pain. I feel overwhelmed waiting for things to land on my head. I feel sad and scared and vulnerable and angry. I hate that I can’t be around people without crying.

I hate being me. I don’t want to walk this road. I don’t want to have to manage these trials and tribulations even though I do have so many wonderful aspects to my life.

I know I am lucky. I know I have a good life. It is hard to feel like I should be in it. I feel wrong from the core of me. I work hard on hiding it but it’s a mixed bag. I wish I could like me the way I like other people.

Noah is at the hospital and I miss him. As much as I think I will be stupid enough to want to sleep with someone else one day I think it is insane that I want to be away from Noah at all. He is the sun I orbit around. When he isn’t here I don’t know what to do. If I don’t have Noah to take care of–what am I even good for? Hell, the kids don’t even need me for cooking anymore. They are all shockingly competent.

I am so glad for Noah. I should go to bed. I’m going to the walk to the hospital in the morning and fetch him home in a taxi. Then I’ll get to baby him for a few weeks. I’m looking forward to having a holiday with him alone. It will be our first time having more than 48 hours alone since before Eldest Child was born. Little twerp is closing in on 17. That’s a lot of years of not having time alone.

I think we’ll manage to have fun even with limitations. Noah is fantastic to be with. I’m glad we get to do this. It is a silver lining on a whole bunch of negotiation that lead to nothing.

You just keep going

Do the best you can

Category Archives: adult-only

30 days out

He was my grown up

This is hard.

Limbo is the worst

Blast from the past

Time to start moving forward

Today is the first day of the rest of my life

Humbling. That’s the word for the year.

Another morning, still no hope

I feel awful.

Keep moving

Frozen hell

There is only pain, there is no hope.

I’m really scared.

It’s been a hellish week.

I’m not ok

He’s gone and I will never be ok again.

It’s the end of the world as I know it

I want to be open.

Too many feelings.