Moving On

“Well the first days are the hardest days, don’t you worry anymore. ‘Cause when life looks like easy street there is danger at your door.” The Grateful Dead.

When I think of how far I’ve come since the first few days after Billy died, I realize I am a different person. I have moved so far beyond the first etchings and scrapings of grief that I can’t even remember who I was three and half years ago. That woman is no longer in me; she was a puppet of grief: tears and lack of sleep pulling my strings for over six months while I stayed out of school and tried to heal. No one really knows what I did for those six months, and to be honest, I can’t really remember that well either. I slept and ate little, lost weight, lost sight of the future and spent most days in bed. I visited my sister in Florida, but I can’t remember those “vacations” as they were not real vacations but more like escaping my apartment, my parents, my school and my friends. Wanting nothing to do with anyone I knew while Billy was alive, I boarded planes once every month and spent time in Boca Raton with my sister. It was my only grief relief for those six months because when I got home, I would walk into my apartment, see Billy’s work boots sitting by the sofa and just cry for hours. That has all changed.

I’ve moved on to another place. My days are no longer filled with memories of the sick bed, hospital stays, feeding tube and a chest that stopped moving air and a time death called. I obsessed on his last day for so long that the file cabinet in my brain filled with his death is now dusty, possibly dented from being overfilled and is ready to be blown up with real dynamite. A friend of mine, unsure how to treat me after this tragedy, later told me that he did not understand why I was taking it so “hard.” I have no malice toward that way of thinking. Many people were confused. How long had we been together? Most people did not even know it had been 15 years and he was my first love. So I don’t fault these people for their misunderstanding. Even my supervisor did not know the extent of this relationship. But, as I said, moving on has been my best “revenge,” or at least the answer to the questions “What is wrong with her? Why is she still so sad?”

When John Lennon said life is what happens when you are busy making other plans, he was a genius. I relish this time in my life because I am truly, without masking it, happy. I can honestly say that I am moving toward a better way of being and that has made all the difference.