6 months ahead OR to the end of the River Styx and back

the early days are all a blur now. just some dark haze where distinct memories get lost in a cloud of sadness. but there was one day i went on a hike and afterwards we ended up at a friend's apartment for dinner. there was wine and laughing and dinner and merriment. they had specially made magnets on their fridge of pictures of them, a smiling photogenic couple going on adventures, standing in front of different landscapes and backdrops. i had been looking for a way to have those made for the bolshevik and i. but that didn't matter anymore. those are all memories that haunt me and cannot be looked back upon.

and when i just couldn't take it anymore i went out into the hallway and curled myself up into a little ball and cried hysterically.

eventually my friend came out to say all the things that friends say. and i went through all the questions that still plague me: why is the bolshevik doing this? can he really not love me anymore?  how can he be over me? how could he have gone to malaysia? how is it that he is so ... okay?

round and round these same questions with no real answers.

and my dear wise friend said to me, "the bolshevik is six months ahead of you." (because the bolshevik told me in january that he'd been out of love with me since summer. did i mention that before? it's hard to keep track of all the cruel things he has said and done)

anyway, my dear wise friend continued, "he's known how he felt for six months and he's been dealing with that. but he didn't tell you, so you didn't get to deal with it until now. six months from now, you'll be where he is."

this stuck with me, my dear blog readers. and although it's been hard for me to picture a future for myself, i could at least try to picture myself six months ahead. there were times when a morning seemed to go on for weeks and a day lasted years. and i questioned if i could make it to this most basic milestone: six months ahead.

and that day is today. today is 6 months from the day that the boslehvik sent me that terrible email telling me he didn’t want to be a team anymore. today also would have been our 6 year wedding anniversary.

so now i have caught up to where the bolshevik was way back in the dark early days.  and how am i? am i okay?

eh. it's hard to tell.

i can go days without crying. but there are days when i cry and scream and punch walls and kick holes in doors.

i can go out with friends and have a good time and sometimes i can even make it home and go to bed without feeling like it would've been better if the bolshevik was there.

but then there are other times when i get to a certain point in the evening where we would have checked in with a text message, recounting some funny yet pointless detail from our evenings. and it just feels like there is a huge hole in my life, with an ever-expanding emptiness that cannot be bridged.

i meet men and allow them to worship me like a goddess, and then i extricate myself from the situation before they can notice the cracks in the facade. because i'm made of glass and any disappointment will shatter me.

i put my arms around every boy i see. they only remind me of you.

sometimes i'm high for days from the attention. sometimes it's a crippling reminder of all i have lost.

i go on trips and have adventures with friends and i try to make new memories. we share private "vacation jokes" that we will forever be able to recall with an inside catchphrase no one else will understand. we drink wine and have a good time and usually i am okay.

but he was my partner in crime and i can't help but feel a loss that he should be here. like he's just away for some reason or another and will one day reappear beside me because that's where he belongs.

i'm currently in greece with friends, and yesterday we went to the River Styx.  yes, it is actually a real river. don't worry, i didn't know that before either.

contemplating life in the River Styx

and the river was freezing and you walk against the current through turquiose waters, trying not to lose your footing on slippery rocks.  and there are times when the water gets so deep that you need to submerge yourself and swim upstream in order to get past a particularly difficult bit.  it's hard work. but it's beautiful and it's worth it.

my friends are a little less adventurous than me, and maybe don't have the same enthusiasm for scrambling over dangerously slippery rocks.  they wanted to go back after a while. and it made me sad because had the bolshevik been there we would have gone to the end. no half measures. no adventure left incomplete. no challenge not fully accepted.

maybe we made poor decisions together. but we saw them through to the end.

we went to the end of the world together. el fin del mundo. i always thought we'd go to hell and back. but i was wrong.