Sunday, March 24, 2013

Illusion

Source - Thanks to my facebook friends for always posting things that I love.


I remember telling my husband “time moves way too fast. Life is flying by. I just want everything to slow down!”

Time came to a screeching halt on July 27th, 2010.

After my husband died, time stood still.

It still does today.

Time moves so slow now. This winter has been horribly long. I swear it's been winter for 2 years now. The days, weeks and months feel like decades. I’ll be at work, pounding away on my keyboard, almost completely done with my work, and I’ll look at the time. I do a double take every time... usually I have only been at work for 2 hours. Feels like I have put a whole 8 hours in, plus some. Yet, I still have 6 hours to go.

With coming up on the 3 year anniversary, I have been thinking a lot about time.

It doesn't feel like it’s (almost) been 3 years. It feels like it’s been a million years.

In fact, the day he died, feels like it happened in a past life. There is no way that at 32 years old, I have been alive long enough for that to happen in this life.

Time has become an illusion. Some days I feel like I have lost my mind. My internal clock is broken. I check the time over and over. Check the calendar over and over. Thinking I have missed a year somewhere. I lose track of the months and years, because it feels like they have already happened.

I have cursed time. Cursed myself for wishing that time would slow down.

It feels like it will be a billion years before I will see my husband again.

That thought alone is devastating. How do I live the rest of my life in slow motion?

Just yesterday, I was on my hands and knees, crawling past the 31 month anniversary. Today I stood up, wiped off my bloody knees and hands, and suddenly the 32 month is staring me in the face. I can still turn around and see the 31 month mark, now I can see the 32 month mark at the same time.

Where did March go?

For the first time in 32 months, a month has flown by.

And it feels fabulous.

I want life and time to speed up. I want the days and nights to not be so damn long.

I want the 3 year anniversary to fly by.

I don’t want the upcoming months to drag. I just want to get the 3 year anniversary done and over with.

I want my days and weeks to fly by.

I want my normal, fast paced life, back.

So I write...

Dear time,
I am sorry about what I said. You are more than welcome to speed up now.

I am ready for it.

7 comments:

  1. It was so familiar reading your thoughts. My husband also died on July 27, but in 2011. Reading your thoughts was exactly like reading my own.

    I thought I was too young to be a widow at 60 but you are so much younger. I hope you will find the strength to move forward. My Aunt was widowed at a very young age.
    Please know that you are in my thoughts and prayers and I wish you nothing but happiness in the future. We just have to get used to this new normal. (easier said than done)

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  2. Since my husbands death I to have been effected by time. Time now does strange things to me. Time seems so slow but whole days will pass without me knowing what I have done with all that time....a few jobs get done but what am I doing with the rest of this lost time? after thinking about this I have realise I am grieving...thinking and grieving.....it is consuming my life.

    I too want time to return to normal and I want to live again.

    Cheryl

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  3. My days are long and quiet. Once I was impatient on time, but no more. Waiting for an hour doesn't bother me in the least. My time before was a mixture, so I had some long days. It did prepair me for what I'm dealing with now. Spring is approaching and the time will speed up with getting outside more, and hopefully I can make enough changes before winter comes again. New normal, I guess you can call it that, because nothing much is normal anymore...

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  4. Time has become difficult for me too.
    As I drove into work today, I found myself thinking of Dave. And how it seemed just yesterday, and yet an eternity ago that he died. (Jun 14 2010).
    How could this be my life at 45? How could my high school sweet heart not be here? We laughed about growing old together and what that would look like. (Certainly didn’t think it would look like this...)
    So I get up alone and go home alone – thankful that I have our dog to greet me at the door.

    Time.
    I’ve been thinking a lot about it lately.
    I no longer love my job and find myself wishing the work week away.
    I fear I’m wasting time here. At a job that seems meaningless to me anymore.
    Trying to figure out a new more fulfilling career path.
    I don’t want to come to the end of my life full of regrets.

    So I go to work every Monday and wish it were Friday.
    I fear I’m wishing away my life and I don’t know how to stop it.
    I want to enjoy it more and ensure I have no regrets when it comes to an end.

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  5. Just found your blog, and am very grateful to find others who are (unfortunately) experiencing the same pain.

    I lost my husband, Stuart, last August from cancer. Together 10 years, we battled his illness for close to 4 years. I feel like something of me died too. As Valerie just voiced, I too think about time, and speeding through...just getting through the week, the day, the hour.

    Being 42, many think "You're still young." That might have been a compliment anytime but now. Being gay, I can be grateful for the gift of having the love and support from both of our families.

    There are many blessings. Our safe home. The love of many family and friends. But I can safely say I have never known such pain as this. I know others here do too.

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  6. Hi, I feel your pain. I am 6 years out and time is back to normal most of the time!
    I am grateful every day. However, I have years that I have no idea where they went, what I did, etc. IT is hard to piece it together in a sequence. You just have to keep going through it. I think after the 5 year mark I felt time change and once it did it happened pretty fast. No, I did not find someone knew or have a distraction. It felt natural and I recognized that for the first time in a long time. Just hang in there and you will be ok. I know it is hard to believe but trust me, it is true. Sandy

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  7. I totally feel you...this was the longest, coldest winter. Ever. And the way you feel about not being alive long enough. I'm also 32 years old, and it always amazes me that I went through all I went through with him in this same lifetime. 6 years of constant ups and downs only for it to end the way it did. No way it was the same lifetime.

    Ironically, LAST winter was my first winter without my husband, who died September 20, 2011. And it was such a beautiful, mild winter...it was like there was no winter at all. I hate winter. And he knew I hated it too. I tell myself that the mild winter was his parting gift to me, to make up for not being here with me anymore.

    But this winter we just passed...what a drain. It felt like half a year of cold, dreary darkness.

    But at the same time, I just hit the 1.5 year mark last week Wednesday and I can't believe how fast that time went. I remember a week after he died, sitting alone on my couch counting to the 6 month mark and thinking "March 2012 seems like a lifetime away." And here we are wrapping up March 2013. And I feel like so much and nothing has happened in that 1.5 year mark.

    I do want time to fly but at the same time I'm so scared that time will go by and I will look back and wonder where the time went, why did I not get my life back together as I dreamed and he wished for me before he died...it's such a personal dilemma.

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