Hiding under the blanket

We lost our sweet friend, P, a year ago today. Depression killed her, and at the time I had been well for months. Losing her felt like it would kill me, for a while. God, that sounds so self absorbed. She was a beautiful person, and I was hit by how much poorer the world was for her loss. My honest first reaction was to bargain, why her and not me? She was needed more!

I get to be weird and self-absorbed here, right?

Missing her feels like powerful waves, and today my life raft is just reading the sorrow and love of all the others she touched. If I'm swimming rather than drowning it's because I'm not alone.

A couple of weeks after she died, my marriage almost fell apart again. We'd been there before, the damaged trust and blame and words that can't be unspoken, and I was already hurting too much to stay and fight so I ran again, for a couple of days anyway. It helped. Somehow time passed and we worked things out. Not how I expected, but solidly and eventually happily.

Through it all I often thought of what P would say. Mostly she'd have laughed, probably, and said "fuck" a lot, and recommended eating all the chocolate, and sent me music when words didn't do it all justice.

A little later on I read a blog post with the words "no love is ever wasted" and I thought that would have been something she'd say, too. Maybe she'd say it to me now, wondering if she knew that we loved her - and love her now, and wish she was here.

I'm hiding under your blanket today, P. Maybe I'll stay here for a day or two.