As time passes, the awareness of Ian’s death has changed for me.
At first, the knowledge would sneak up on me, punch me in the gut when I remembered the reality. Then it became this constant feeling of doom, gloom, sadness, and pain. At this point, though, it’s different. Interesting. I never forget. It’s not as though I don’t always know and remember the fact. However, now, I’m finding that I’m not always conscious of it. That throughout a day of work, it’s not constantly there, hovering in the back of my mind.
Now, as I go through my days and do the things I have to do, I realize I haven’t thought about it for a while, and I’ll force myself to think about it. To be actively cognizant of the fact that he is gone and will never be back.
It’s almost as though I’m afraid that I WILL forget… Or that I will randomly decide not to believe it anymore. And looking back at that first day, the first weeks, I realize that in a way, I’ve been forcibly reminding myself from the beginning.
I HAD to tell our mutual friends. I HAD to be the one to reply to emails at work with the information. It was as though the constant reiteration was a necessary part of whatever process I was going through. Am going through.
Thinking about it from an analytic perspective, it seems almost masochistic. Looking from that angle, I think that I’m torturing myself, constantly ripping off the protective bandage over the wound. But it doesn’t feel that way to me. It’s almost a relief every time I have to re-state the facts. Every time I go over things again. Every time someone else needs to be told.
That confuses me. I wonder if there’s something seriously wrong in my mind that reminding myself, that hurting myself all over again feels good in a way. It feels cleansing. Like I’m scouring out the muck, burning away the residue. It’s like pouring peroxide over a cut to clean it. It hurts, but, “It has to hurt if it’s to heal.”
Right?
I don’t know. Maybe I am a masochist. Maybe the emotional masochism I so often accused Ian of is something I cling to as well.
All I know is that I’m sitting at work, doing my job, being relatively ok, and I find myself stopping my thought process to think, “No, really. Ian is gone. He will never laugh at another joke or sing another song. He will never hug me again,” and that the tears that gather behind my eyes but at this point, rarely fall, feel right.
Written 3/27/2014
678 total views, 1 views today
