Just a big 'ole depressing purge...move along...

How do you say happy birthday to a dead man?

You can't.

It helps to raise a toast, tell a funny story, or even just say his name.

David O'Farrell.  You were alive once and the centre of my universe.

You were real.

Our life together was real.

He would have been 41 this year.

Maybe it's all the drug changes and messing around with my brain chemistry but this year his birthday was so goddamned hard.  And I fucking hate the platitudes....still.

I guess maybe I'm still angry.

I just want him back.  Two and half years later and it still seems like such a bad dream.  I know some people must feel that I'm stuck in my grief and not moving on.

Fuck 'em.  This is my fucking journey.  Get back to me when you've lost your soulmate...when you've had to bear the strain of the world falling apart around you all the while doing everything you can to keep him going through his despair, his fear, his all encompassing anger.  My shoulders bore so much while he was sick.  People supported me where they could be so much was mine, and mine alone to bear.  And I would still do it gladly if only he was still here.

Get back to me when you have to stroke your soulmate's hair and hold him as he dies suffering gasping for breath and trying to scream but he can't.  

I just want him back.

I swear I would bear that and so much more if he was still here.
 
He did not deserve to suffer and die so young.

 It should have been me.

But now he's gone...dead at 38 and life makes no sense without him.

I live with 2 people I love and laugh with but there is still this pervading sense of wrongness in everything.

I've been in therapy for a year and have made great strides only to fall back into a helluva relapse lately.

I felt like I was ready to break the whole time he was sick.  But I just kept on going because I loved him and he needed me.

Now I don't know what to do.

I'm trying to use my new tools for coping.  I'm trying to have empathy for myself.

I'm trying to remember that "a relapse is only a reminder of how far you've come".

Just breathe.

I wish I believed that I would be with him again someday but I just don't believe in heaven.

Unfortunately hell is all too real.

I am a baker that does not bake.
I am a writer that does not write.
I am an artist who does not create.
I am alive but I do not live.

This is all just a purge.
A pressure valve releasing.

I miss him so much.
I wish I could bake you a birthday cake and you could blow out your candles.
I wish I could turn around and see you there smiling at me.
I wish I could hold you again.

David O'Farrell
May 26, 1971-Dec.21,2009

You will never be forgotten. 

There are no cookies that can fix this...

I dreamed of him last night...my late husband.

It  has been 837 days since he died at the age of 38.  It has been 837 days since I became a widow at the age of 37. 

For over two years I've dreamed of him usually twice a week.  There are 2 kinds of dreams with him.  I either dream about the time when he's sick and dying or I dream that he somehow recovers but doesn't want me in his life anymore.

Either way I lose him.

Last night was the first time in over two years I dreamed that he somehow came back to life and still wanted to be with me.  We held each other tight, we cried...I had so many questions...so many things to say that I've figured out since he died.  He told me he loved me.  We could not let go of each other.  He said that for him it was like falling asleep and waking up again.  I know that he suffered but somehow  he didn't remember it.

There were so many tears shed from me and he just held me and told me over and over again that he loved me and he was here again.

I didn't want to wake up.

While I was asleep, I could still be with him.

I miss him so much.  I wish I could believe that he hears me when I talk to him every night.

It felt so good to dream that he was there and that he still loved me but waking up to the reality of him dead was cruel.  I guess it's less cruel than dreaming he doesn't want me anymore.  There's a part of me that is very grateful that I finally dreamed of him cancer free and still loving me.

 I still don't want anyone else.

There are no cookies that can fix this.

Memories of my old life

Yay!  I finally got my peripheral drive working again.  Now I have access to all my old pictures and I even found a short video of Dave trying out our new camera waaaay back when.

I must have watched this about 20 times in a row.

It was taken just before we moved to Whitby.

I also found a picture of the garden I made.  When we moved to our first house (across the lawn from the house I grew up in), the yard was nothing but a gigantic overgrown cedar hedge and some sketchy grass.   We took out the hedge, and built the fence together.  Then, over the summer while he was at work, I dug out the patio area, laid 2 types of gravel, built u the garden beds and planted the garden myself.

I had it so good and didn't even realize it.

All I kept thinking of was how the house could be bigger, the yard could be bigger....shit like that.  I really didn't appreciate what I had.  I had the love of my life, a house, a garden I made myself, my sister next door, and lots of wonderful pets.

I feel like we were still kids and had so much growing up to do.  I only wish we could have done it together.

Hindsight is cruel bitch.

I totally need to bake something.

And then it dawned on me...

...why I had a rough day yesterday.

The day before yesterday I mentioned in passing that technically I'm single.  I HAD  NEVER, EVER SAID THAT BEFORE.

Just over 2 years after his death and I have in some small way begun to accept it.  It was a milestone moment for me that I really did not enjoy.  Instead of seeing it as part of the process of grieving my mind immediately went here...

Ok, all sarcasm aside, admitting that to myself and saying it out loud really did hurt.

He's dead.  He's not coming back.  I am single.

And so I was uber sad and panicky with fits of weeping yesterday.  I hurt from head to toe and had trouble going outside.  But you know what?  I got through it.  I did go out to one of my appointments and I did NOT drug myself up and sleep it off which is what I have done for the past 2 years.

I practised some of the DBT skills ( Dialectical Behaviour Therapy ) I've been learning in therapy over the last several months and I got through it.

I don't have to like it, especially because I still feel married and I do not want anyone else, but I guess I'm going to have to eventually accept that he is really gone.

Yesterday a part of me reached some level of acceptance.

Progress fucking sucks.

Cookie Crumbs in my Bra

Do you ever take off your bra at night and find food in it?  Well tonight there were cookie crumbs in it which sorta got me thinking about navel gazing because I'm looking in the same general direction.

I've blogged before.  Sometimes it was funny but mostly, I admit, it was just venting negativity out into cyberspace and wishing someone could make it all better for me. 

This time I'm going to try REALLY freakin' hard not to do that.  Now, don't kid yourself, it ain't all gonna be cheery and positive.  I'm still learning to put a life together after the death of my soulmate and husband, David O'Farrell.  I'm battling mental illness and trying to learn a new way of doing things that gives me a life that isn't defined by my struggles with mental illness.  And sometimes shit happens, yanno?  It's a process.  It's not linear.  And I'm learning as I go.

So why cookies?

I've been baking cookies for a long time.  I baked my first batch as a young kid and I bet my sister will remember with a laugh that I tried to fit as many as I could on the pan not realizing that they expand as you bake them.  Yep...I ended up with one big cookie.

I'm no expert.  Hell, I don't even bake fancy cookies.  But I do try to do my best to make sure those cookies come out as best as they possibly can. 

Just like life, cookies can be good or bad.  They can be an amazing success or a horrendous failure.  Cookies take patience and respect for the process it takes to make them.

Sometimes cookies crumble and fall apart.

You can't put them back together but you can make new ones.

That's what my life feels like.

I thought my husband's death to cancer would kill me.  But here I am 2 years later breathing.  I can never get back what I lost.  That life is gone.  I will always grieve it's loss just as I will always grieve him.  You never get over loss like that, you just learn to live with it and eventually you learn that you have to make a new life for yourself.

He loved the cookies I baked for him.  His favourite were oatmeal chocolate chip and he would practically jump up and down with glee when I made them for him.

I love you.  I always will.

My late husband, David O'Farrell