Living in both worlds




We had a house warming party yesterday.

In case you don't know the backstory; 15 months after Dan died, the house where baby girl felt completely happy and safe, the house Dan actually died in, our home where we wanted to stay forever was, in short, taken away from us. After five years of living there our landlord decided he wanted to sell it and kicked us out. Just like that, just because he could. I guess his conscious was ok with kicking out the young widow and her small child. It wasn't really ok with my conscious but there was nothing I could do. I wanted to buy that house and stay there forever but we couldn't afford what he was asking. So we had to move. We had no where to go.

As I've said before, we have an amazing family, the second I told Dan's parents they said "move in with us, let us take care of you" so we did. We then bought a house which is a complete fixer upper and have spent the last five months fixing it. It's taken about three times longer then I wanted it to. It's still not done. But I had already postponed the house warming party three times so we had it anyway.

It wasn't my idea to have a house warming party. My friends told me to. Presents they said. It will be something happy for you to celebrate they said. Ok you have a point. But my heart wasn't in it. It is like living in two different worlds. In the first one, you know you are lucky, you know you have good things. you love your new little house and are excited to decorate it, you want to have your friends come over and tell you how great it looks. You want to be happy about this "new chapter" in your life. In the second world your husband is still dead and you still don't understand how you are still breathing anyway. That pretty much squashes everything else.

We had a party anyway. I woke up that morning with some pretty big anxiety. Why am I doing this? Whats the point? Why am I doing anything? I should just cancel it. We should just stay home and hide under the covers. That sounds way better. We went anyway, after all it was my party. People came, it was good to see them. They brought presents. I showed them around our tiny little house, so small it didn't even need tours but I did it anyway. We still need to fix this and this and this I said over and over.

"This will be really good for you guys" I heard over and over and over. Yes I replied, we are excited. It's not a lie, its just living in one type of world. The one where you want to be happy and you try to be happy hoping if you can just act happy for long enough eventually you will be happy again. Don't worry the other world was there too. They exist simultaneously but most people can only see you in one or the other not both. The other world there is a giant emptiness surrounding you. sucking the energy out of you. The world where you know your husband isn't there with you. The world where everyone seems to be ok with the fact that hes not and your screaming it's not ok but no one hears you. The world where your sister is trying to be sweet and brings you the flower your husband always brought you the "symbol" of your love. Then she tells you not to be sad as you stare at it, that she didn't mean to make you sad.  Where your friend notices that your introverted husband is not hiding out in a corner somewhere counting the seconds till everyone goes home. You live in both worlds.

We did do something remarkable this week. We got the house ready for a party. We painted and we brought in some furniture, namely our couch. It looks like a house now. This is good. Before that it looked like a giant construction zone mess and smelled like it too. Baby girl tells me all the time that it's stinky and cold and shes just gonna stay with grandma and grandpa because their house is cozy.  We brought our couch in and sat it on the floor (the legs were taken off so it would store better and we haven't found them yet) Almost immediately baby girl said "o our couch I love our couch" and jumped on it. Baby girl told me three times in the next 24 hours that our house felt like a home now. (we don't even have beds yet, but apparently all you need is a couch.) We did something else remarkable, we made pie for our party. We made pie in our kitchen, the first time we've actually cooked anything there and it felt like home.

I wanted to bring a picture of Dan over to set on a shelf but I forgot to grab it. Soon our walls will be covered with pictures of him. We live in both worlds, the one where he is in all our memories and should be with us in our new house and the one where I painted the walls my favorite color and not his because he didn't get a vote.

I wrote a book about my grief, you can read it here: Carry on castle

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