Valentine's Day

I know what you mean about opening a bottle Sheila, I'm avoiding it as I know it makes me more emotional. My daughter and all my friends keep saying "have a drink, you'll feel better" but i know I'll just be a sobbing mess.

This weekend has been awful, my daughter has gone away with friends and my son has been at work. I can't summon up any motivation to do anything because there's nobody here so i don't have to pretend. I miss him so much and sometimes i think "i wonder when Mark will be back" then i remember he's never coming back and it floors me again. 

I feel so so sad that this is my life and your right ellie68 it isn't quite the same for our children, even though they've lost their lovely dad who adored them. We spent all our time together and I am lost without him.

I'm so sad that we're all in this "club".

Love and hugs to everyone. Ali x

I used to love going to bed now I know it is just the place where I sob. I used to love Sunday morning sitting in bed with a cuppa and the papers just chatting and planning, now I hate it. I’ve got his picture on the bed next to me talking to him like a mad woman. Yesterday I wanted to phone him as I did every single day but then remembered he had gone. It’s just so hard.

im back at work tomorrow all be it from home and I need to get a grip. Start eating healthy and going to bed at a decent hour not sitting up late watching crap and eating crap. I told my Bob I wouldn’t cope. Without him and I am struggling. I just want him back as he was my anchor who kept me grounded. Everything just seems of 0 importance. Me, the house we loved, the garden he loved and I can’t get my head around it. Family are wonderful and they see me as “doing well” but when they are not around I really am not.

Help me get through this.

Sheila

Sheila, just like to say your not a mad woman. I keep a picture on the pillow, and I talk to it. A lot of us talk to pictures, I find it comforting, I take the picture with me when I visit family, it stays on her pillow, and the spare pillow she always had stays on her side of the bed, and the lump where she would have been gives me some comfort. It's just a way of coping, nothing wrong and as many of us do similar things if it helps just do it.

I ate crap for a while, but I realised years of helping I  the kitchen  I can actually cook quite well, so I eat better now. My daughter visited a medium, the one thing she brought back to me was a message, stop eating crap, you need a hearty meal, which is exactly the words she would have used.

I cook most days now, and I feel better for it.

I'm sure you will get help and comfort from the group, we all do similar things, and for me whatever helps is the new normal.

Take care. Eat well, dont beat yourself up normal is whatever helps you.

Gary

Agree with you Gary and your doing what you feel is best for you.

Luckily for my stepdaughter and myself I'm a good cook and force myself yo do it for us both every day.

Sheila the new normal is something that you have to embrace. Just after my Angel passed away, a colleague of mine came up to me and told me a story of him and his wife in bed a few months after their first baby had been born. Tired, emotional and exhausted  his wife in tears said when will it go back to normal. He cuddled her and said there is no normal this is the new normal.  That is all he said patted me on my arm and walked off.

That is what we are all going through now and its made me realise that we have always losed old normal and go on to a new normal. When you change school, work, change friends and even when you meet your loved one/soul mate you lose old normal and start new normal together, it's just when you are happy and in love  you don't see or notice it.

When you split up with your partner you know it's going to happen and you prepare yourself for it and mostly embrace the new normal.  

But when they are taken from you the new normal kicks in straight away and all you want is to go  back to old normal which died with your loved one. That's the hardest and we are all experiencing this and those around you need to understand.

The new normal is still building itself and the positive thing is that YOU are in charge of it being built. Don't let others tell you what you need to do it's your new normal,no one elses. Build it into a positive  way of life that your loved one would be proud off. Don't let the new normal build itself and you just follow it as it's not the new normal you created and wont enjoy.

Chin up everyone and keep positive x

Thank you everyone I am so grateful for you all taking the time to reply I take great comfort in these messages. From tomorrow when I return back to work I will try and slowly get a grip and take baby steps in building new normal and make bob proud of me. I am lucky to have family and friends close by and I know I have to continue living as I know you are all struggling just the same as me. Please keep encouraging me and I know it will be a long uphill battle ahead of me but I do feel he is watching over me.

its very hard isn’t it and seems so unfair.

i will try and start to eat healthy but that means learning to cook so perhaps that’s my first hurdle to overcome.

nothing is going to be moved for a long time that’s for sure it’s all staying where Bob left it.

thanks everyone

Sheila

Sheila, I read your posts and I could honestly think they were mine. Everything you say resonates with me.

I hope you have a good day tomorrow and work gives you something to focus on.

Love and hugs. Ali x

Hi Gary,

Ah thank you for sharing such a personal and very moving story. And I totally get where you are coming from. My Paul and I were apart from autumn of 2013 to June of 2014 and during those months when I thought our relationship and with it all the dreams of a brilliant future together were once and forever lost I felt a grief so intense that the only thing I could compare it to was the feeling of sorrow once he would die. And, interestingly, when he became terminal but even more so when he died the pain was kind of familiar to me and I then realised how similar it was to the pain I had felt in 2013/2014 only that back then there was still some hope however little that we might get back together again. And I am so so truly blessed and happy that we did get back together and had 4 more wonderful years together.

Love, Mel.