Hard

I spent most of today back in a numb state, thinking I was understanding rationally that I was going to have to start feeling better at some point, wondering about when that would be, blah blah blah.  I went through some more papers.  I went out and got a dowel to replace the perch on the bird feeder: it disappeared a while back, and we'd been sticking random twigs through the support holes in the feeder to replace the perch, but lately no birds had been using the feeder with the Joe Pye weed stalk I'd stuck on it last week, so I felt like it was time to make more of an effort - Jerry wouldn't have liked the birds not coming to the feeder.  I cut the dowel to length on Jerry's miter saw in the basement (never having used a miter saw before), sanded the ends and installed it in the feeder, and just now checked and saw what was probably what Jerry would call an indigo "buntning" (extra n deliberate, of course) on it.  So that was good.  Also got more acetaminophen and pseudoephedrine to deal with the headaches... second day in a row with those now.

Picked up the mail on the way back in and discovered the Illinois unemployment people are ordering me to attend some sort of job search workshop on 4 August as a condition for continuing to receive the paltry little amount of unemployment benefits they're giving me.  Whatever.  I checked job search sites again, and not having any idea what I want to do with my life, in every possible way, does not add to my longstanding inability to create a career or know what I'm even capable of or what I'd be happy... ha... doing.  I don't want to end up in clerical work again.  I can't be a cabinet finisher anywhere else because my cabinet finishing never progressed past the actual finishing part: I can't match colors, I can't choose the appropriate finish medium for a given project, I can't even fix the equipment I've been using for 11 years if something goes wrong with it.  I always just asked Jerry.  And at Wood Bros. that worked out okay.  Anywhere else, it wouldn't be enough.  I'd make a good editor (or at least a proofreader), but my only experience with editing was a few months in 1987 in St. Paul... long ago and far away.  And my not even knowing where I'm going to end up living, if I'm going to stay here or move somewhere else, makes me feel even more paralyzed about it all.

But anyway, so there I was, getting through another day, with, I thought, less pain.  Which didn't make sense for 5 1/2 weeks, but I thought, I'm managing today, this is hard, but it's happening.  And then I was looking out the window of our bedroom and the full force of the fact that I'm never, ever going to see Jerry again hit me so incredibly hard - maybe I wanted to tell him I'd fixed the bird feeder, I don't know.   But whatever it was, I knew at that moment that he's not coming back, that I'm never going to see him again, never hear him say "I love you," never be able to say it to him ever again.  Never touch him again.

How do I survive this?  All I want is him.  I just want him to come home to me.  He was everything to me, he was who I waited my whole life for, he was Mr. Right, the love of my life, and how do I keep going without him?  I miss him so much.  I just don't want to go on without him.