I’ve been a serious asshole to one particular person since Noah died. This is a woman I have had a contentious relationship with for going on 22 years. Us interacting like oil and water isn’t new but I am less restrained this time than I ever have been in the past. In the past I always knew that my Bestie and my husband carried a torch of affection for this woman and that stilled the worst of my tongue.

Not carrying grudges and being willing to forgive people is a really strong cornerstone of my sense of self identity. Savagely reading this woman for filth across several different platforms is not a thing that a nice person would do. I am not always a nice person. Especially when a particular person keeps trying me decade after decade.

I feel bad that I went off publicly but I also don’t. The person I used to vent my spleen to so that I could be civilised is gone and she fucking tried me 3 days after he died. I get my ass handed to me on the regular. When I fuck around I find out. Other people get to sometimes as well.

I don’t owe everyone nice every day no matter how hard they poke me with sticks.

I think I actually got “Be nice as long as you can and then be effective” from Noah. It’s fine for me to want to be nice. It’s great if I can get things to work out that way. Yay! Everyone wins!

I work hard to not be a raging cunt. I really do. I walk away from most fights, hell I run. Sometimes I am a bit of a cunt.

Noah and I spent a lot of time talking over the years about whether or not I should have backed out to give more space for other people, particularly some of the women who are whining about how I stole him. One of those conversations in particular, not that long ago, involved him curling his body around mine and sobbing about how desolate he would feel to lose time with me for other people. He would feel empty and sad and lost.

When I think about the ways our varying attachment traumas wrapped around one another, I know what he meant. I am going to feel that overwhelming sucking black hole for the rest of my life. I am going to spend time with other people and I am going to smile politely and accept the scraps that they have to share. I am always going to know what it means to be filled with an absolute tsunami of want and need and love and understanding. Only now the tide had receded and will never come again.

It’s really weird. I am around the age I should have been when my father died, if my life had anything like a natural course. Instead he died when I was 17. Noah and I had a weird co-raising-each-other relationship for 18 years. He raised me, I guess. I feel cursed.

I feel horribly sad about the future I am going to have. I am going to be a horrible person for all time because I am going to compare and that’s not fair. Noah was not an average person and I have no right in any way to think about him when I am dealing with anyone else on any level. It is unkind for all involved. I feel really bad that I am like this. I will always understand the magnitude of what I lost. Noah was special.

Noah gave me unconditional love. He is the only person who has ever done so. In a much more limited fashion, he gave that feeling to other people too. He was bizarrely messianic. He made people feel loved and important and the person he wanted to spend all of his time feeling loved by was me.

I feel incredibly ashamed of having ever done anything other than adore him. I feel like I displayed a shameful amount of self absorption. I feel sad. I don’t even actually feel a massive amount of self loathing. I feel like I should, but I don’t. I’m tired.

I’m sad. I have to keep walking and it doesn’t matter if I am good or if I made the right decisions or if I would do it all again the same way. I have to keep moving. I don’t have to like it.

I do have to not loathe myself. I have to act like Noah picked a good person to marry and to be the mother of his children. I need to be the person I want my kids to grow up with. That’s a complicated thing.

I knew who that was when I had Noah. What do I do now? Pam is leaving soon, as she should because she needs to get on with her life. More people are coming, but they won’t have the answers either. No one does. This is a riddle I have to solve all by myself. Who am I going to grow up to be? I don’t know yet. I never wanted to meet myself post-Noah. Definitely not at 43. Oh it sucks so hard. I feel some fucking self pity right now and I think it is ok that I do.

Happily Ever After is over and I’m left as a shitty, petty, stupid bitch who is still slap fighting with someone from over 20 years ago. I fucking suck.

So I blocked her. I never block people. It’s a policy. This time I broke it. I genuinely want her to go have a good life. Away from me and I’ll never look again. I need to move forward.

I need to stop having my nose rubbed in how much I never deserved him in the first place. It doesn’t matter at all if I deserved him. He wanted me. I wanted him. I kept him until his body gave out. I gave everything I could.

This hurts in waves of nausea and warmth and cold and rage and emptiness and gasping sobs. It doesn’t hurt in the way that never knowing what being loved hurts though. There are rests between the waves where I remember what it was like to be loved like that. Times when I remember that even if my whole life is in the rear view, I was loved. I was absolutely loved and adored and someone’s best girl.

There is the very real chance that I am going to spend most of the rest of my life alone once my kids are adults. I can’t imagine I will get easier to put up with. I will have friends, but my life is going to be small. I will always be conscious of the mask I have to wear.

I will never be known like that again. I will have a future, possibly, with someone. What I will never really share is my past. It is over. My past is a closed book. Sure, some people might visit once in a while to remind me that once upon a time I earned their love.

It’s different though. We have grown in different directions. We shared only bits in the past.

I’m really sad. I liked being loved the way that Noah loved me. It is very hard knowing that I will spend the rest of my life feeling sad and missing him. He was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Good thing he gave me the second and third and fourth best things to happen to me.

I didn’t get everything for the whole of my life. I haven’t had a lot of good years. Most of the good ones were with Noah. I am glad I got to see what a happy family looks like. I get to carry on creating one even though I don’t feel very happy.

I will again someday. It will always have this shadow though. I wish Noah was holding me. I want Noah. I want Noah and it is hard to want anything else when I can never have him again.