Well, it's April. I said in a previous post that I've been bogged down with work and illness and family lately and it was almost enough to keep my mind off of the major reason I'm not a fan of this month. Almost. I've been wondering lately how my life may have turned out if things had been different. It's not necessarily that I want it to be different, or that my life has turned out all that awful. I have a beautiful daughter, amazing friends and family and a career that I love. People can do much worse than that and I'm quite aware of how fortunate I am. But whenever you lose someone, there's a tendency to think, 'what if?'. I've never really felt that until the last year or so. What if that night had been just like any other, no loss of life, nothing out of the ordinary? Would my accident have happened if hers never had? Would I still be...the same, mentally, as I was back then? Would the 'dark ages' have ever happened? All of this has passed through my mind recently, possibly because this year would've marked the 20th year we were in each other's lives. Instead, it will mark the 13th year I've lived without her. Something that I didn't think was possible, both before and after it actually happened. And that kills. More than I thought it would actually. But I guess you never really get completely over it. You just learn how to get through your days with that feeling. Sometimes I miss her so much that I dig out some of our old stuff...her stuff...and the way it makes me feel varies. Sometimes it hurts like hell, other times it cheers me up. Not that she's gone obviously, but that I was fortunate enough to have her while she was here. But it also reminds me where we were in our relationship at the time and what might have happened if we'd been fortunate enough to venture on.
After the initial loss, I convinced myself that that last time was for keeps and we were headed towards marriage and kids and a happily ever after. It's part of why my own self-destruction got so bad. I'd never find something that good again, never find someone who just absolutely set me on fire in every way imaginable. I wanted to give up on everything because of that. But once I came out of the fog, I went into the anger phase of mourning and decided that it would never have worked out. We may have gone on for awhile but, just like always, our stubbornness and need for freedom would have split us up, maybe for good. It would've been ugly. It would've been epic in a way that saw even the friendship destroyed. I always felt like we both valued the friendship above anything else. At least, we seemed to behave that way. If our romantic ties ever threatened to tear us down completely as friends, we ended it. I'm not sure if that ever would've changed. We really seemed to get on track and consciously keep working on changing things, but that doesn't mean it was for keeps. Hell, we could've fallen apart weeks or even months after committing to "forever". There's just no way to know. My ideal scenario would have been to stay together, be as amazing as we were at that time, and hopefully end up with our own version of happily ever after. But that's all it is - my ideal scenario. No one will ever know what actually would have happened. As much as it sucks to admit it, we were never meant to be anything more than what we were. It was all set in stone eons before we ever came into each other's lives, that we were going to have to say goodbye.
In no way do I believe her leaving was a good thing, but I know I wouldn't be who I am now had it not happened. While I do believe I would have skipped over most of the negativity that happened in my twenties, I know I would likely have had to deal with other things that altered me in some way. Other losses, other situations. There is no way for me to get to who I am now without everything that happened to the old me back then. One thing I'm very curious about though is how my level of creativity would have changed. I love creating, I love making things and writing and music and all of that stuff. She did too, even more than I do, and that was one of the things that was so awesome about us. We challenged each other to be better, to be more creative. I feel like I fell even deeper into my writing and creating after she left because it was all I had left, my last link to her. And because I still wanted to be as good as her at creating things. I don't know what I would've done if I couldn't write during the dark ages. It's one of the first things I did when I woke up. And it's one of the things that brought me back to life years later when I finally shook off all the negativity I was in. This month never gets easier, per se. But it does get...muted. I've learned to focus on the now and on the good things, especially when the actually day rolls around. I'm still here for a reason.
