Its a long one i,m afraid but maybe if i take you on my journey a bit it could help.
My life felt completely pointless i had always been a carer in one way or another and had no one to care for - i didnt have the fainyest idea how to care for myself i wasnt wrth cooking for i didnt matter at all. - I worked i had to go back to work, but it felt like why bother, all i am doing is working to pay the bills for a life i dont want.
My girls had both moved away in the previous 6 months one to the other side of the world -there was a horrrid divorce going on with the other who had also just been through a major trauma of her own and even a threat i would be deprived of seeing two of my grandsons again at that time -because their dads new girlfriend hated my daughter and by default me too.
Everything was just so awful i felt helpless to help them and i couldnt even earn enough to keep paying the rent on the house we both loved so much, so had to move and lose that too and the community we lived in -it was the worst time of my life - and i will be honest i did think almost clinically about ending it
but then i imagined a conversation if we ever met again, if that was even possible, how angry would he be with me how could it a re union of any kind of romance he faught for his life and i threw mine away, and caused even more hurt too our familly than they were already going through, that i would not longer be the person he knew and loved because that would have been such a change from who i was before.
Later that thought turned to that potential conversation - what i could do with my life - and again what if i did nothing just survive but wait for it to end - how short would that conversation be -a hug a kis a welcome and then what - we were more than that - like you we talked all the time we did things together all the time laughed at each others ways or errors we made that were funny or silly and there were so many things he wanted to do but never got the chance too -so if i couldnt live my life for me i could try and live it for him - and if that meeting never happens at least i will have filled those empty years.
It wasnt easy it wasnt a sudden revelation that picked me up and launched me instantly into doing these things but a seed of thought and because i was the introvert, the one who was happy to stand back and shelter under his wings - the one who cannot walk into a cafe and order a coffee on her own let alone a room full of people this wasnt going to be easy -and i didnt avoid depression, but then i have SAD and have always struggled in winter anyway - the difference now is there is no-one there to make it better - light the fire and cuddle up with me, go for walks with me on the days the sun shone, make sure i ate -make me laugh - look after me.
So i had to fight each dragon that stood in my way or find a way to go round it but even the planning that went into that was motivation even though i didnt realise it then. - On his birthday i started planting native daffodill bulbs in some of our favourite places most of those were campsites we had had meets with other campervan enthusists so to do that i had to get there, so the campervan needed to go back on the road, and i needed to be in contact with the others from the group and go back to those meets to access the sites. But when i did those who had been his freinds helped me to do it. I cant tell you how many times i set off somewhere in that van and almost turned back but it was him that drove me forward. The following year and every year since I went back to the place we loved most and planned to retire too, and i sat on the harbour wall and watched dolphins and cried that he wasnt there, but also felt felt he had sent the dolphins to see me He had adopted one as a present for me - that year on the last evening it was the first time i ever saw her, she swam into the harbour with her calf i couldnt have been closer too her and still be on land.Over those years i have made new friends all of us there because of the dolphins and all of us from different places but recognising each other from those conversations or shared boat trips and this year going to the pub together every night and having a laugh.I still feel closer too him there than anywhere.
But going back wasnt enough on its own there were things we planned to do so i did some of those on my own too - i cried my way through a Russell Watson concert because we had been bought the tickets just before he died - he was the fan but i did it anyway,and too this day i cannot bring myself to listen too his CD - I have still to walk up Cader Idris and i will do it one day.
There were also things that he might have done and i would most definitely not - zip wiring acorss a gorge in south africa was the utimate i was terrified beyond belief but my reward on the last turn was a rainbow in a waterfall - something he knew i had always said i wanted to see once in my lifetime.
To do any of these things took money and i so i was working for more than just paying bills and work became more important than it had before.
I can get on a plane i can travel across the world i have done surfing and snorkelling but not just for him because now i do these things things for me too - but i still cant walk into a coffee shop or a restaurant on my own, the point is i dont need too because there are always take aways - and in the UK i have built a conversion for the camper van so i can cater for myself - another new set of skills aquired in order to avoid a dragon.
Sometimes we set ourselves goals that really are the wrong ones - and i have done that too joined local things WI, amateur dramatics which is about all thats on offer here and then ended up shattered and sobbing back at home because i didnt fit in - i was doing what other people said i should but not what suited me, i know that now, but then it was, in my mind just another sign that i was a failure as a person.
I still need to look like some-one who has a reason to be somewhere i need a prop - a camera is a good one -i have series of photos of vintage car radiator grids from a steam fair he liked going too - and another of building gable ends in Manchester - because i had to break a journey there and had hours to sit around -there are ways around everything and the camera meant it looked like i had a mission.
If you imagine right now you are in a forest and you are sitting under a tree - and everything around you is black and frightening its fine to stay there you dont have to move away from the tree but at some point the black will start to become more colurful - leaves coming out glimpses of blue in the clouds - you will look up hear a bird sing see a ray of sunshine and spot a path - and take a step towards it - sometimes we move forward in the wrong direction or go around in a circle and end up back where we started under that tree - other times we see another path and set off again and path leads to another unexpected one - doing fee online courses to fill the time lead to me finding something i could do that i never though of before. The tree is always there we can still go and sit there and shelter under it and that is fine too it doesnt mean we have failed or we are not grieving properly or we are crazy but the things we discover on those paths are the way we move forward until we find the right onefor us.
I am not religious i dont have a single set of beliefs,and i dont doubt some aspects of all of them including science and quantum physics , but i feel quite strongly that if that meeting ever can take place, if the conversation can ever be had, i wont afterall be telling him about everything as though i did it on my own and he hasnt been with me, but we will talk about it as though we have shared it , because so many time i have felt him present with me - and if none of it is true and there is nothing as tangible as that and even if he is just a memory he has still been my guide, pushing me forward looking afte me and he is still with me in some way because he was always the motive to start to live again.
I still work but i also volunteer for a school gardens permaculture project in Africa - most of that work is done from my desk here thanks to those course - and his tools, the ones i dont use, eventually went to a project which cleans them up and gives them to young people over there to help them get training and start their own business, and that was so easy to do because he went out there and trained mechanics himself - so i know he would have done that ith those tools himself.
Over time you will value some of his possesions and keep them and they may be really unexpected things (a rear heater matrix from our first camper van for goodness sake) and others you will find you can let go because its right at that time.
But it all takes time not everyone is the same -so not the same length of time - not the same journey or path - the local group worked for Sandra it could work for you too but you will find your own path.
This is my 8th year, i still miss him i know i always will there are still days i struggle to cope,nights i dont sleep and empty spaces i cant fill and i still talk too him,but i dont regret at all that i made the decision i did, to go on and fight and live for him and generally life is good.The oldest of those grandsons is moving in with me at half term october so i can help him get through his gcse,s -so its about to get better, and again that unexpected path of education has taken another turn into teaching.
Ther is something for all of us and some way in which they remain with us finding that is an adventure and a complete emotional rollercoaster but you will and for now you need to be kind too yourself every step is important every small thing you do is a step.