We were Valentine scrooges, Beau and I. Not because we didn’t believe in love but because we were too lazy to brave the traffic to go out on a date and found it insane to pay the sudden premium on roses, chocolates and things pink and red. But we did find it the perfect excuse to stay home and just enjoy each others company while eating trash disguised as cheesy, salty snackfood and sharp, bubbly, sugary soda. Today is Valentine’s day again, but all that is left for me are the things we avoided about it. The man I loved is no longer around to share the calories, to share the silence, to share the warmth of a priceless hug. I shouldn’t be affected actually. We never celebrated Valentine’s. But even the “non-celebration” is a memory of what once was and again, a reminder of what can no longer be and why that is so. The latter is the more painful, as no matter how beautifully my life turns out, the horror of the way he left will be remembered with questions unanswered.
I’ve gone on a standstill with my efforts to proactively deal with Beau’s loss. If in the months right after he passed away I wrote incessantly and read voraciously to equip myself for survival, in past months I’ve dealt with my pain through avoidance. I’ve stopped talking about him, stopped writing about him and refrained from thinking about him at all. Ive blocked my pain somewhat, hoping that Rhonda Byrne’s Secret would work and that i would attract happiness instead. And in a way it has helped me to cope. I seem happier. I’ve seen possibilities and began wishing for things again. That I suppose means I now believe there is a future. For one does not wish for things when one is devoid of hope. It makes me guilty though to be trying to forget. I feel like I am doing him a disservice although when I feel that I argue to myself that it is HE who did a disservice to me by leaving me widowed so young.
Valentine’s brings those thoughts to mind. It isn’t surprising that I feel more than a bit sick and nauseated today. And while I sit and pray at his crypt what comes to mind is the emptiness that he has left behind. I am sick to my stomach and I suspect it has something to do with the burning in my heart.
I miss being loved. I miss being number one in the eyes of another. I wish to tell everyone who gives the standard well meaning line that to love myself would be the most important thing for now to go to hell and go back into the loving embrace of their significant others. Leave me be. You do not understand and fear loneliness the way I do. I wish to be loved. Anyone who will judge me for that is of no importance to me in any form whatsoever.
I will love Beau forever. But he is also gone forever. And I refuse to live a lifetime alone.
Surviving Beau 