;)
I have some of the best friends anyone could ask for. And I can tell you for a fact that when you go through such a major life change, you find out exactly who your friends are, and you may make some new ones if you can let yourself.
Usually when I write a blog post here, I am working out something that is on my mind. Normally I write, LOTS of times I cry. Sometimes those things happen at the same time. Then when I have finished writing, it feels as though a burden has been lifted. I feel freed from whatever it was that was holding on and digging in. Normally. Sometimes I write about almost the same thing more than once because (and this is where I'm digging around in my psyche) I haven't written correctly about what's going on, it's like I can't find the root of the problem yet, because I'm too close. I can't see the veritable forest for all of the trees.
So in my agony over the notebook, I cried on and off most of Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. It hasn't helped at all that it is that time of the month, that my father had eye surgery and my world just seems to be moving faster than I can right now. Some of the stuff that's been happening is really exciting, but it's all a bit stressful and finding that notebook just sent me to the brink. I couldn't decide if it was a very hurtful or a very happy thing to find. But thanks to a very special person, I think maybe it was a wonderful thing to find. I am going to treat it as a joint scrapbook from Allen to me and from me to well, me I guess. It's lovely to have something as fitting as this particular book is - to put photos in and to write about our life together. The nice thing about a scrapbook is that you can put it up somewhere you don't have to see it, or take it out as you like to go through it.
I thought of some other things that are in a box in the garage right now that I have no idea what to do with. There are wooden easter eggs that his mom had painted for us with our names on them. I think I have decorated for easter once or twice. I'm thinking she might like his egg back. It's just hard. I think if I were older or had been married longer, or maybe if all these little trinkets had really had more meaning I might want to keep them, but they don't really hold anything for me. The Christmas ornament reminds me of how sad I got every year when the holiday came around and he didn't even want to talk about it or share in what used to be his favorite holiday movies with me. I wasn't allowed to sing carols or watch my favorite movies if he was home. The easter egg, it's just a painted wooden egg. Easter wasn't a holiday to him.
The notebook, the hundreds of notebooks in the study were important to him. They filled his waking hours. He never went anywhere without at least one notebook and usually a mechanical pencil. Most of the time he had two or three notebooks. Before the days of ipods or smartphones he also carried a ton of cds and a puzzlebook of some kind around as well (unless he was studying chess, then he had his chessbooks).
I've worked through my anger with the chessbooks. I did that when I pulled some off the shelf and ripped them into a million little pieces. I used to love playing chess. Allen taught me how. We used to play all the time. It was fun. Then he wanted to get better, and better. He would get irritated because of my game progression and he wanted a more challenging partner. I found studying other people's games to be on the really boring, sucking the fun out of playing the game. So I didn't study. He could have found someone to play online with easily I'm sure. But he didn't want to play with a "stranger". He would record our moves in a notebook and wanted to discuss every single move and why they were made. After a couple of weeks of playing multiple games nightly where he would try to explain the "whatever" defense or attack I finally told him I needed a break from playing. It wasn't fun for me to have every move I made criticized. It wasn't fun to play game after game after game so serious.
So we stopped.
But I can't rip this notebook to shreds. It does remind me of things that make me sad, but it also reminds me of how sweet he could be when he wrote. He always said he could express his feelings far better in prose than he ever could out loud.
Somewhere upstairs I have a few notes he wrote me over the years when I was asleep. They are very sweet. They make me happy.
I can't imagine how long it would have taken me to move past the notebook thing without my friend. I can't imagine what I would have done if I hadn't had girlfriends listen to me cry, and watch and just tell me it's ok. I can't build a wall. I have to keep the doors open. That's how you get out. And it's how others get in.
And that is a good thing.
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