Dreams of his crash won't pass / Oh, how they all adored him

Feeling very angular today, and very tender. Everything is poking me the wrong way.

One of my favorite bands is playing the Metro Gallery in Baltimore this summer, and that's making me nostalgic for the city I left.

I refilled Jay's pillbox this morning, and it hurt me to think that the physical pain he's in is coming from pills doled out by my hand. Somehow that's different than driving him to the infusion center for other people to inflict meds on him. I know it makes no sense, but it bothers me at a really basic level.

I'm feeling uprooted and displaced. Not quite sure where those feelings are coming from, but they're definitely present.

I'm feeling lost and sad. I know exactly where those feelings are coming from, and they're no surprise, but they do catch me off guard sometimes, and this is one of those days.

I'm alright, I tell myself twice in the mirror before I can't go to sleep at night

So my dreams last night involved a chair not unlike Jay's African throne (no kidding) and my precious, irreplaceable jewels having been tossed carelessly on and around the chair.  All were broken in ways that were irreparable.  No need for dream analysis there.  My dream mind is not exactly being subtle at the moment.

The weirder thing was the dream where I was telling Jay about the first dream.  I don't think I've ever had a meta-dream before.

It was very weird to wake up and not be sure whether I had actually told Jay about the dream or not.

Last night was a weird night for sleep, anyway.  I got to sleep about 10 and was awakened at 11:30 by the nocturnal wanderings of a member of the household (no, that is not a euphemism) and didn't get back to sleep until after 1.  Since I get up around 5, and truly need 7-8 hours sleep, I woke up in a fog, pretty useless.

Wondering what tonight's dreamscape will bring.

Cliches and other chatter keep our minds from thinking

Woke up this morning from a night of hideous dreams.  I don't remember any of them, but at one point I woke myself up with the sound of my own whimpering.  I'm still wandering around in a fog, pretty non-functional.

JayCon weekend was wonderful, but exhausting.  It was an interesting contrast to last year's party, where I knew about 4 people and sat off to the side the whole afternoon, except for getting pizza.  This year I probably knew about half the people there, and of the other half, about half of them knew me.  I'm still getting used to this acquaintance/fame by proxy thing, but it's kind of cool.

But this is just another piece of Jay dismantling his life.  It was hard to watch friends who had come from far away say goodbye to him, not knowing if they will ever see him again.  It was even harder to see Jay absorb all this reality.

This was the first time in all of this that I've even begun to grapple with the reality that I will be the widow when Jay goes.  That had simply never occurred to me.  I don't know what I thought my role would be, beyond *grieving*, but the fact that my role would have a name had passed by me completely.  I had a firm grip on the adjective, but had no idea what noun it would be modifying.

All that said, the party was wonderful, and I met so many amazing people.  I'm running out of adjectives.  I sat off and on all day out in the main part of the restaurant with other introverts who were overwhelmed by the noise and number of people in the party room, and had lovely conversations.  The tiki god ceremony was a riot.  The love in the room was profound. The giveaway of interesting things from Jay's basement was fun and funky.  It was a cascade of emotions both deep and ephemeral.

I'm listening incessantly and am utterly earwormed by the Silversun Pickups song "Future Foe Scenarios" (as evidenced by the title of this post).  It seems to hit all my emotional buttons, mashing them down mercilessly in a fat-fingered dialing of noisy catharsis.  (How's that for an image?)

I've got a therapy session on Wednesday after missing two sessions to my therapist's vacation. Should be interesting to see what comes up.

Never think of never, let this spell last forever

Today is Jay's birthday, which means that we've been together for a year.

This is not actually true.  This is really the anniversary of the day we met in real life for the first time.  But I cheat and call it our anniversary because neither of us knows exactly when we figured out we were a couple, so this date is just easier.  I'm lazy like that.

A lot has changed in this year, more for me than for Jay, I think.  A lot of the change is obvious: I moved cross-country, I'm in a now-no-longer-new committed relationship.  Some of the non-obvious change is a direct result of the obvious changes: I'm a lot more confident being in the world than I can ever remember being in my life.  There was probably a time in my early childhood that I briefly approached the world with the confidence I have now, but I don't remember it, and I can't imagine that it lasted very long.

The biggest change for me is my coming to see myself as strong.  Until I chose to come to JayCon last year and meet Jay, I would not have thought myself strong enough to choose what I have chosen and survive and thrive in the situation I am in.  The simple act of coming to JayCon was far and away more adventurous than anything I'd ever done in my life.

While we were trying to figure out whether we could actually work as a couple, I said to Jay in all seriousness that he had no idea how strong I was.  The irony is, neither did I.

In the year we've been together, Jay has helped me see myself so very clearly, to see all the good and bad that I carry within me.  He has loved me without question, for all the good and for all the bad.  He has brought untold joy into my life.  He has begun to teach me how to live life on fast-forward. Actually, he's taught me a lot about it already, but I'm a slow learner.  Hard to change the habits of a lifetime, but I'm working on it. Trying to keep that forward momentum going.

So happy birthday, my dear, and happy anniversary.  I love you.