Monthly Archives: January 2025

Frozen hell

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I’m going to have a hard time crawling out of the hole in which I believe his death is all my fault. Noah being gone feels like the end of hope, joy, love, and being cared for in this life. I lost it because I didn’t protect him enough. I let his fragile body be damaged. I loathe every aspect of myself. I pushed him too hard. I am a monster.

Is it actually all my fault that his body gave out? No. I am not in charge of the cells in other peoples bodies. However, if it’s all my fault then I deserve to be punished and that feels like the only justice possible given what happened to Noah. I deserve to be punished for the rest of my life because I didn’t keep him alive. My life will be a punishment of its own. I will not have Noah.

11 days without Noah. The longest we have gone without seeing each other since we got married was 6 weeks. I think that happened one time on the road trip. Usually we didn’t go longer than 3 weeks on that trip and never longer than a week and a half since. We don’t like being apart. We have never liked being apart.

I miss Noah so much. I have no idea how I will ever recover from this.

There is only pain, there is no hope.

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Today is the 9th day I am waking up without Noah. It hurts so much and I feel like I will explode with pain. I am grateful that Pam and Shortie are still sleeping with me but someday very soon that is going to probably change. I need to start getting up and getting moving in the morning absurdly early in order to have breakfast on the table before the kids go to school. Breakfast and dinner are big events in our house. We all have intense dietary needs and we take care of one another by sharing meals of good food.

Good here is going to get increasingly neurotic because I can’t get sick and my kids need to be able to be physically well enough to withstand school and we have to cook for ourselves because very few places around here put vegetables forward in the ways we require. We are all losing weight; it’s clear as the nose on my face.

All of us improved our relationships with Noah over the past year. The older two got a lot closer to him in 2024 because he had so much time for us. He played with Shortie every single day. He and I alternated between having uncomfortable conversations and having the best sex of our lives. I really felt like we were growing together in a way that would have paid off for decades.

Noah, how could you leave me? I am freaking out. I keep walking in circles flapping my hands and beating on my chest. Noah, how could you go? You said you wouldn’t leave me. Noah I need you. You are right. I will never be ok without you. There is no one but you for me. Yeah, I wanted to fuck other people for momentary distraction but no one ever crawled into my heart and mind and soul the way you did. Now they aren’t a distraction they are a reminder that I can’t have you and I don’t want anyone else. Not really.

I mostly wanted to think about other people because the end result every time was being grateful for you and feeling extra lucky because you are so much better than everyone else. Smarter, kinder, more diligent, more devoted–Noah you were the best of everything and my body cries out for you night and day. My hand moves under the covers to find the body next to me then recoils because it is not you.

I no longer think the phantom pain in my vagina is a bad thing. I hope it lasts forever as my payment for not being a good enough wife, for not taking care of Noah well enough. I want to be in pain every single moment I am alive. It is all I deserve for not making sure Noah survived longer than me.

I don’t believe I deserve to feel good ever again. I lost Noah. He was my reason for everything. He is why I worked so hard to be better; because Noah believed I could. Noah spent a lot of time doing hypnosis on me trying to change my brain. How am I ever supposed to feel good again when the thing that made me feel like I was good was putting my mouth on Noah’s body. I could kiss his hand or his foot and I felt like I was good. It was even better when I put my mouth in other places. His joy was my joy. His happiness was my happiness. I am so glad that I pushed for all the sex we had towards the end.

I am freaking out about my future now. It’s been hazy and cloudy and unclear for me for a long time–I had nothing to work towards. Now that feeling is magnified times a billion.

I actually had a lot I was looking forward to. Noah was growing ever closer to me and we were spending so much time together. We fit like perfect pieces in a puzzle with our kids. We created a world together. We traveled the world together. We had so many adventures yet to come. We were such a happy family. I’m really scared that it all came from Noah and that time is over.

Noah was an avid photographer; I am not. I am going through 20 years of photos and only finding a few hundred of him while there are many many thousands of everyone else. That made me feel really bad for a few minutes but then I realised: the reason we were always smiling so big was because we were looking at Noah. He was the one who wanted the shrine of pictures as motivation; we just needed him. Him being part of the family was enough to keep us working and pushing forward.

In perfect love and perfect trust I tried to take care of him. I failed. If I had not been so depressed lately he would have opted out of ice skating. He would have said it would be no fun for him. But he wanted to be there to support me. I feel so ashamed of the way I only focused on our daughter and not on the pain and distress he was feeling. I feel so guilty that I wasn’t with him to help him not fall on the ice. I should have been. I knew he wasn’t comfortable and that the boot was already hurting his foot. There was too much pressure. I should have told him to sit out the activity. Jenny’s husband did. Why didn’t I fucking tell him to go sit with the other dad and not participate?

Because I am selfish and stupid and I thought I knew best. “Exercise is good for you.” Maybe it isn’t always. Noah wouldn’t be dead if he hadn’t gone ice skating. I’m not in any way upset with the friend who invited me. He came because of me. He wouldn’t have gone on that generic family outing if I wasn’t such a pathetic crybaby that he came so he could take care of me.

I’m having a hard time being around people. I’m not comfortable around people. I believe I have no value to anyone outside my family so being out in public is a rude thing to do. People don’t want me here.

I know it is actually a very small percentage of the population that is anti-immigrant and anti-American but they are pretty fucking loud. I got asked to leave the bike group over the summer. I’m now freaked out about any other community stuff I’ve been doing.

2024 was a fucking brutally hard, nightmare of a year. And it’s going to be the last good year of my life because I had Noah.

I’m going back through stuff Noah has been writing lately, Jesus we are both obsessed with our death being imminent. His actually was though and it is horrifying looking at date stamps and seeing how much it feels like we fucking knew it was coming. It is making me shake to the core of me. I felt like I didn’t deserve to have him. And I lost him.

It’s an accident. It’s fate. It is the only inevitable outcome of life.

It is not fair.

There is no fair.

Ted never predicted that I’d have a long happy marriage. He said I would win in court; he said I would never be poor again. Maybe it was not in my destiny to deserve Noah for more of my life. I wasn’t good enough at cherishing him when I had him.

I am scared of the ways I have hurt myself in the past that were blocked by Noah’s presence in my life. Without Noah the chance that I will go do stupid stuff is really high. The chance that I will put myself in a dangerous position is stupidly high. This is absolutely terrifying. Noah has been taking care of me in a lot of ways. He has done a lot to keep me safe in the past 18 years. I am deeply afraid of what I will do without him in my life.

I am expecting to be celibate until my youngest is close to legal age here. It would be deeply unwise for me to get into any kind of NRE situation before then. It would not be great for my parenting. I would act like my sister and that’s not ok. I need to reiterate this to myself a few thousand times. I never get to act like my sister.

I am so scared. Noah, I have only been ok because of you.

I wish we had put the Santa Barbara painting in your room instead of down here in the apartment. You should have been looking at this. I am sorry.

I am sorry for a trillion reasons. I was never as good to you as you deserved. You earned so much more. I am sorry. I am sorry for my pettiness and selfishness. I am sorry for my neurosis and depression. I am sorry I spent any minutes thinking about anyone but you. I was really enjoying the way you were specifically crawling into my head to try to change that part of me at the end. You finally felt like you had the right.

Noah you are right, I will not be ok. I will be a husk. I will be an empty shell, all that is left of a cockroach.

I miss you. You were everything to me. I will get the kids launched into the world. I will do that. I will help them build the kinds of networks we built, the relationships and friendships that carried us through. I will feel empty the whole time. I wanted what we had. I loved how much time we spent together. I loved being ever more enmeshed with every passing year. I loved that we were stunted trees that leaned until we found each other and then together we reached for the light.

Noah, I don’t want to feel better. I want to be feeling shitty but be doing it next to you. Noah don’t leave me.

How can you be gone?

I’m really scared.

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Noah and I have been writing intense long things to each other for most of this year. We did it in a walled garden. I’m rereading big chunks of it and feeling like absolute garbage. I was not as good as he deserved. I did not serve him in the ways he was owed and I feel so much shame. I feel self indulgent and pathetic and weak and unworthy of the glory that is sharing Noah’s life.

I lost it. There are nine million “what if’s” that could have changed this and every single one is beating in my head. I am so sorry, Noah. I don’t know how I will ever feel joy again. You were my joy. You were the center of my heart. You were my partner and my companion and the only one I had to care about pleasing in any way. You were so easily pleased. I loved pleasing you.

I wanted to spend the rest of my life gardening while you played the piano with the window open. We hit the fucking lottery. We were there. Our time was starting. And a perfect storm of stupid things mean you are dead. I am alone. I do hear your voice in my head but I sincerely doubt I will ever find a way to be ok with another human. I can’t. I lost the best one because I was stupid and I didn’t bubble wrap him enough. I shouldn’t have asked him to go ice skating. I shouldn’t have ignored him and left it to be his problem when he told me the boot was too tight and it was hurting the top of his foot. He didn’t have fun. He went for me and I was a jerk and I didn’t help him. I focused on making our daughter have a good time instead because I didn’t feel I could handle them both.

I am a selfish piece of shit and I hate me so much.

I am making sure your babies eat. Yes, including vegetables. Today I said I needed some time alone. Noah I am so sorry for everything. I’m sorry I invited that man to have dinner with our family so that he wrecked this part of our year. Hell, maybe you wouldn’t have died because all the rest of it wouldn’t have happened.

I feel like I have done everything wrong for a very long time. I did not make the choices that guaranteed me all the time with Noah. I fucked up the calculus.

The fact is that he died and it was a ridiculous odds loss and he was a grown up that picked all of the things that happened to him. But I am the daughter of alcoholics and that means that everything is always my fault.

I loved him so much. I loved his too muchness and his brashness and his silliness and his cruelty and his selfishness. I loved his relentlessness. He was so much. He could suck all the oxygen out of a room before replacing it an instant later. He made everyone sparkle and shine. He was good at making people feel interesting.

My chest is burning because it feels wrong for me to breathe if Noah can’t share the oxygen. I want to give to him so much it is ripping me apart.

I don’t need to keep designing my garden so there are hiding places for us to have sex. Well, that simplifies my needs. There are a million things on my list of “do for Noah” and now they are all coming to a stop. I don’t need to have a fucking subscription order for foot shaving tools. We will spend almost no money on alcohol and our food budget is going to go down a lot.

I have started cancelling your monthly recurring stuff. I’m so freaked out. I feel like I am editing you out of the world and it feels morally wrong. Hell, rebuilding rails just came up for renewal. I’m paying that one and letting it work until it stops working. Maybe one of the kids can figure out how to operate it.

I don’t want to.

It was hard shoving myself into the size of box that fit you but it was a good kind of hard. It wasn’t easy and sometimes it chafed but I knew so much happiness with you. Yes, I still suffered from all my shit, but I wasn’t alone. I trusted you enough for you to be the person who got to see me behind closed doors. All of me. You are the only person I trust to really love and want me. You looked for me like water in the desert. I did the same.

Then I lost you.

Noah, how could you leave me?