The Hamster Wheel

Tonight is just one of those nights.  Friday night.  I used to love Friday nights.  Now I hate them.

Well, one year has come and gone (several weeks ago, that is).  People were right!  Amazingly, I feel so much better about my horrific, unthinkable, disgusting loss!  Whew!  So glad I stuck it out through those 12 months.

OK, now that I'm done being sarcastic, let me be clear -- one year come and gone only means I have lived one year without Mike.  The last time I did that, I didn't even know he existed.  I can never go back to a time when he isn't needed or relevant in my life.  The gaping hole is there.  Period.  One year come and gone just means I'm further away from his presence, his laugh, his stories, his touch -- his love.  How is that supposed to make me feel better?

I just returned from a little vacation to see family and friends.  It was a good trip, but it was a trip I was supposed to share with Mike.  I was around other couples, couples with kids, people living and loving and enjoying life.  I'm just the miscellaneous person in the mix.  Believe me, nobody made me feel that way.  In fact, people try to make me feel included in things.  But this new weird feeling I have about where I fit in is tattooed on me and there is simply no emotional laser surgery to clean me up.

In a few short weeks, I will be moving from the house Mike and I shared together and will be re-locating to my home-state of New York.  I will be temporarily living in the house in which I grew up.  I have made peace with the move, and feel it's something I have to do right now, but at the same time I feel like I am being thrown back in time to when I was a different, more incomplete person.  I don't want to be that person again, yet the "me" I want to be is dead.  I don't even like my life much of the time.

Yup, 12-plus months and all I am is a hamster in its wheel.  Round and round I go, exhausting myself to keep going forward in a life that I don't want any part of, and there is no way out.