Everything is just so hard. I can’t even get my thoughts out right now. Maybe it’s the silence, though I have the TV on constantly for the noise. But that’s the wrong kind of noise. It still seems so quiet. I can’t escape my thoughts, running through my mind in a constant loop. The images change but they are all of Ariella, who she was, her life before and after cancer, the hospital, what might have been. Anytime it hits me that she’s gone forever I panic, I can’t catch my breath, I start shaking. This just can’t be, and yet it is and I have no choice but to live with it.
Ariella of course was our world but she is my world more now than ever. Before she ended up in the ICU, even after she had been diagnosed with cancer I was able to think about things besides her throughout the day. She didn’t consume my thoughts and emotions. Maybe as a baby but I also had my own life to think about, separate from her. Now I feel so intertwined because of her absence. Every single thing makes me think of her, whether it’s something she would like, something we did, or something she never got to do, anything, makes me feel her absence. Even mundane daily chores. One of her chores was to set and clear the table. I think of that every time we have a meal. Cooking. I can count on one hand the number of times I have cooked dinner since Ariella died (actually since mid-February when she went into the hospital) and cooking for 2 is not so different than cooking for 3 except that I don’t have Ariella asking “what’s for dinner?” and I don’t hear her complaining about homework or grumbling about setting the table while I’m cooking. So it is completely different. It’s like that with everything I do.
I’m having a hard time getting out my thoughts today. I’m having trouble concentrating. The emptiness, the silence, the stillness, her absence is ever present and it’s stifling.