Sunday is still the worst day of the week. I stand in the bathroom thinking about my discovery that morning. My brain is allowing me to think about it now without the wave of shock and rush of everything. I know it is not happening all over again. I am safe but I also am not; because it happened and we are all still living it.
I let myself be with the feelings. I let my mind work its way around it. I am not frightened anymore because the worst has happened. The time is now and our certainties can only be found in the current moment and those that have gone before. I am living for a tomorrow that I am not entirely convinced I will have. I plan for LP’s tomorrow. I set out school uniform, I make sure there is bread. I leave the telly on CBeebies in the belief that she will wake up in the morning and choose whether she is too old for it or not. I am less concerned about the readiness of me in so many ways. I am still hopeful but I don’t entirely trust that I have decades worth of days ahead. Time runs out. Daddy disappeared.
A few weeks ago I fell apart. I called the doctor. I was as useless to myself as Miss Polly’s dolly. I asked for help and duly took the medication. At first I felt almost instantly numb. I wondered if the simple act of taking the pills had given me a sense of peace or just resignation to my rock bottom state. This is how it is now. Taking the drugs to stop the erratic see-saw within.
Then after about a month I started feeling again. This time in a way that felt right. I was no longer flatlining with my emotions. I was a person again. I no longer needed to talk myself down before getting out of bed. I stopped catastrophising the minutiae of my life. I stopped trying to solve all of my problems by consuming things: food; possessions; the attention of friends and family. I had some balance back that I didn’t need an outsider to resolve.
Grief and antidepressants are like opposing magnets. Like two passing pedestrians; choosing the same path of avoidance several times before succeeding in their trajectories. The treatment stops the crash.
At the same time as giving my brain a chemical leg up, I called to check where I was on the waiting list for therapy. The guy on the phone apologised for the wait- I’m almost there- top of the list to let it all out.
Time is upon us. This could be it. This moment that you are living.
Recent experience has taught me that you have to live for what is right in front of you. Plan for tomorrow in the hope that you’ll get there; but the present is what counts. Here is life’s embrace. I have to throw myself into it all. Babies have been born, friends are getting wed. Acts of love and numerous tomorrows. We have not stopped all the clocks; every happily posted image is a ticking. This tentative optimist is a believer but sometimes it hurts to look. Every good day bears the death caveat.
Time itself means little. We live our lives adhering to timetables. Demarcations of time. We book our experiences and we turn up when we are supposed to. We live the thing and we leave. Seb died almost a year ago. It means nothing because he is still gone. Time feels irrelevant. We are marking 11 months of learning how to live differently. There is a before and an after and that is it. So I am existing in the moment. Here comes the now.