I really don’t know where to start with writing this.
My head is such a mess these days that I’m for once struggling to find the words on how I feel.
I’m in disbelief that it has already been a year since Nick passed. I really feel like I’ve stood still in time with the whole situation. It’s a crazy crazy feeling to really think that 365 days have really gone by. This past week has felt like I’ve relived the whole scenario all over again. I can’t help but think about those last text messages we said to each other and thinking of how he just stopped responding to me…
I’ve found myself wondering today what was on his mind that day..
Was he truly sure about doing what he did? Is it what he really wanted? What were other things he was thinking about that day and was he nervous?
The hardest ones I think about are was he going to miss me?.. Why couldn’t love be enough? Was he thinking about the love we shared and how special it was? Did he think about how much I really loved him and how this would hurt me?
I’ll never know but it’s not about me. It’s about him and him being at rest and being at peace with himself..
I think about how horrifying it was to be woken up at 4am with the coroner inside my house breaking the news to me and showing me the notes he left..
I think I’ve done a lot of blocking out to where my minds become a little bit backed up with information with no outlet. I’ve lost a lot of my motivation to write. I’m working on getting back there but everything has still been really hard to deal with. I’m finally understanding the effects of depression and no matter how much I fight it, there are still those days that make it hard to even get out of bed. The best advice I can give about being depressed is DO WHAT MAKES YOU HAPPY WHEN YOU FEEL LIKE SHIT. Do I deal with my emotions? Yes in my own way. Sometimes it’s not the healthiest but I get through it.
I think I’ve done an “ok” job with trying to accept the fact he’s been gone. What I mean by that is that when it first happened the first few weeks/months didn’t feel very real but every so often it would and that’s where my emotions became a constant mess with coming and going.
I’d be lying if I said I was completely ok. I’d be lying if I said that I’m over what happened and so I’m not going to lie. I just feel sometimes like I’m in a coma from life in general. I have all these people around me giving me love and sitting through things with me but I’m not really awake to be receptive to it, just hear it.
What I will say is that I’ve been happy with my progression this year. Work has been going amazing in the sense that I’m steadily growing and taking more classes and having the support around me every day is a true blessing. I’m blessed to work with such caring people and blessed to have a boss that genuinely wants to make sure I’m ok..
Grieving over someone I was in love with is not like any other thing I’ve ever witnessed or experienced. Losing someone this close and living my life like everything is normal is just un-fucking-realistic. It’s an unrealistic expectation to think that in a few months, I thought I’d be ok. I thought I’d be ok by now in my head. I thought that the missing him would have eased a little but it all continues to come and go and leaves me feeling lonely a lot of times.
One thing I never mentioned that I probably should have was that when Nick passed away, my first love from high school passed away 4 days later.. His name was Matt and Matt knew my whole life and we remained the best of friends. Matt was there for me during every major event in my life. The sad part about that situation is that since I was grieving for Nick I wasn’t truly able to grieve for Matt. I still try to tap into those emotions on how I feel about what happened to him and such but I can’t because the loss of Nick was so major that the lines between my emotions get blurred and the loss of Nick overpowers any situation. It still hurt because Matt was my first boyfriend. He would call me piglet and I’d call him pooh bear and up until he passed we still called each other those names we gave each other when we were teenagers..
I’m not saying this now because I want sympathy but because although all my friends were there for me when Nick passed away, not many people knew the story about Matt and how he had passed away too.. No one knew how deep I truly was hurt losing 2 of the most important men in my life.. I just wanted to focus on 1 hurt but instead it was coming at me both ways and making me feel a lot like I was drowning. Without friends I have no idea what would of happened to me.
I remember being upset that Matt hadn’t reached out to me because he was the type to see what I posted on Facebook and reach out to me and see how I was doing. I remember being on Facebook and seeing he had passed away and so I reached out to his best friend and she told me what happened..
The last time I saw Matt he was incredibly depressed and it was so not like him at all because he was always so fun loving and what happened to him leads me to believe that he was not taking care of himself because of how hurt he was in life..
The loss of these 2 men in my life has lead me to believe that even though men are strong and have a stigma of carrying the weight of everything; we all feel in the end… Society tells us that boys don’t cry but we do and we feel and that is not a weak trait. The thing with most guys is they don’t open up because they don’t want to come off as weak and that’s not fair. I’ve lost very important people in my life because of this. So if you’re reading this and you do that, let that shit in and be honest with yourself and others around you who want to help you.
Nick and Matt were both so similar and they were both Capricorns like myself and we all had that same trait to us of just trying to be stronger than we really are.. The only difference is I found a way to release emotion…
I’ve met some great people but none like Nick and no connections as strong as the one I had with him either. I’ve been lucky to find guys that genuinely care about me and want to help me through this… But there’s only so much one can do.
Unless you’ve been in a situation like mine the best way of getting help is a lot like when someone is walking you home from a long walk you went on together. You can walk and talk and laugh and cry but at some point that friend is going to have to turn around and start walking home and you have to finish walking back by yourself.
There’s a cutoff point.
Ex: There’s a point where someone can’t relate on that deep of a level and just offer advice and it’s up to you to continue that walk by yourself.
It’s hard to even be intimate with someone or want to get closer because I realize I have not let go of Nick. I still feel like I’m in a relationship and it really interferes with meeting people. But that’s ok because I continue to feel completely emotionally unavailable. I guess it just feels nice to get out of the house and meet new people even if they don’t stick around long.
Ex: When I’m out with someone new I’ve just met, it feels a lot like reading a book. You’ll be reading but realize you’ve stopped paying attention because of something in your subconscious coming up to distract you but you’re still reading. It’s like you know the bits and pieces of the book are good and it’s good overall but you’re just not interested enough to continue reading. That’s just how disconnected things start to feel between me and people I meet.
I know that one day if I do meet someone again, it’ll feel the same way it felt when I met Nick. I’m not going to compare him or look for the exact same feeling I got when I met him but I know when I meet that ‘guy’ if I do, that I’ll know in my heart they’re the one.
Grieving started to get easier in May/June from what I noticed. I started to sit down with myself more and really think of how far I’ve come with the situation and how I feel now. I realized then that things felt like they were getting easier just a little bit.
What makes things hard sometimes is the thought of how much he truly loved me from the way he was nesting before he passed away.
One thing I probably didn’t mention in previous posts is that… A few days before he passed I noticed he bought an extra remote for the play station because he knew how upset I got that he sold the extra one we had because I wanted to play videos games with him. So he bought an extra controller and when I think back at it now I realize that he did that so that I’d have someone else to play with because he knew I’d get lonely..
Had he not done little things like that around the house, I think it might be a little easier to let go but they’re such solid reminders of love that I can’t help but feel that love all the time. I’m not fighting it but I’m saying that I’ll always love and cherish him and his memory because of the amount of love he gave me even up until he passed away.
I’ve started to forget what it was like sleeping with someone else. I’ve started to get used to not being kissed every day and not being held every day.
I remember what it was like when he and I were together. I remember what touch was like with him when I really think about it but I’ve slowly learned to be single again and to put those precious memories in a box and box it away.
The past year I’ve dreamt with him a ton to the point it feels like living a double life. Most of the time in dreams he either doesn’t say much to me, he looks sad, or I see him with someone else. I wake up most of the time extremely upset and sometimes crying the entire day because the dream just seemed so real but it was not so much a good one with him.
There’s only been 1 dream on record that was my favorite.
We had gone out to the garage, a local gay bar here in town and it was dark with neon lights and death star fixtures hanging from the ceiling (from star wars which he loved star wars). We went home and took a nap and I woke up and started to get ready to go to the movies. I was getting all sorts of dressed up, bow tie and everything. I realized he was dozing off on the bed and so I then went to him and told him to wake up so we can make it to the movie in time. We got to the movies and the movie theater room we were in was huuuuge. We found our seats and watched a movie and it was just perfect. The feeling was so serene in the dream and it felt exactly how it felt when he and I would go to the movies. I remember looking at him and smiling and watching the movie and just feeling happy and so calm. We weren’t holding each other or anything we just sat there quietly watching the movie and that feeling of calmness in the dream, I can still remember.
I remember waking up and just being so calm the entire day because of the dream.
Going to the movies was our favorite thing to do. We went so many times a month and so I knew in my heart that in this dream he was definitely visiting me and creating that same experience for me, that we used to have together.
Then there’s dreams like the one I dreamt a few weeks back…
I had dreamt we were in a different town by some railroad tracks and I saw him and ran up to him and gave him the biggest hug and told him I knew he was back and that he wasn’t dead. I kissed him and hugged him and he didn’t really do anything back. I just felt this sense of sadness come from him and then I woke up.
Those are the dreams that fuck up the rest of my day because they make you feel like when you want something so bad and you know you can’t have it.
He always got me gifts.
One thing we had ALL OVER THE FUCKING APARTMENT, were charging cables. So today on the way to Yosemite I was charging my phone with the last cable he gave me that I’ve used in my car for the past 2 years. Somehow the cable bent and broke and so I kept trying to wiggle it and my phone wasn’t really charging. I then realized a piece of the charger BROKE OFF INSIDE OF MY FUCKING PHONE. The first thing that popped into my head was GET YOUR FIRST AID KIT because I had a sewing needle in it. So I used that sewing needle to get it out and it popped right out.
But now my cable is ruined and I have to throw it away. I know that I can keep it but then I’m just hoarding and I don’t want to do that. I take it as a form of Nick wanting me to let go of a lot of things that remind me too much of him because he wants me to move on and be happy. I’m sure he knows this weekend is hard as it is so he wants me to just be easy on myself. At least this is the vibe I’m getting.
To sum everything up
Grieving over someone you loved is easily one of the hardest things you could ever experience. I’ll cry at certain moments out of nowhere. I’ll hear a song that reminds me of him and either cry or know he’s around. I know it’s not supposed to be something easy but I’ve also realized it’s never going to go away. I’m sure I’ll find ways to deal with it and learn to live with it but I don’t think I’ll ever truly get over it. I know down the road I’ll miss him at times and think of the things he did for me and how much he helped me in life.
But overall I’ve tried to hold onto the things that keep me feeling close to him like his unwashed shirt, going to the movies alone, listening to music we both liked, singing in the car to the songs he loved hearing me sing. The way he would put his arm around me when we would leave the movies is something I miss a lot now for personal reasons..
I feel in my heart that after this weekend I’ll truly be able to heal a little bit more. I think what I was holding onto so much were the memories we made last year. All the places we went and how social media would remind me of certain events we went to and how happy we were together. I was holding onto each one of those memories. Now that the 1 year has passed by who knows what the next step of healing is. This 1 year was the memories. Learning to look back and smile and not cry as much (granted I still fucking do cry) but it was learning to just be ok with myself and to continue to love him but to let go a little bit more..
Dear Nick,
It’s been a year since you’ve been gone now and you’ve missed so much.. I’ve let my mohawk grow back out like you liked! I missed having long hair so I’m growing it back out. I’ve picked up some of your habits you used to do to remind myself the impact you left on me and so that I never forget you. When I shave I bang my razor against the wall the same way you used to, to clear the blades lol. I’m growing up more and more each day and maturing more and loving more. I’ve changed some of my ways to make sure I never make the same mistakes I did in how I might of made you feel sometimes. I’ve learned to love a little more and to understand where others are coming from before jumping to conclusions… Kind of…. lol.
I hope you’re healed in another world from the pain you were in. I hope you feel how much I love and miss you. I pray that the constellation in the stars of our zodiac sign will always be a permanent reminder to you of how far my love will always travel for you.
I hope you know how hard this has been without you..
How hard it has been going to the movies alone, driving alone, and sometimes eating alone. There’s nothing I can do or say to make myself feel better other than to suffer through the pain when it rolls in but I don’t mind it. I’ve understood that by letting pain in, it has also helped me heal. The harder I cry and the more it comes in and destroys me, the easier it gets to rebuild stronger and just learn to carry you in my heart without it hurting as much..
I know when the strings in my heart begin to uncross and my head begins to become more clear, I’ll let go.
When rainy days become enjoyable again and when I can look at the cloudy skies and just appreciate those days and nights in, without crying, I’ll know I’ve moved on but kept you in my heart.
I’ll know the day I decide to ever go to a movie again with someone else whether it be a friend or a lover, I know you’ll be there and I know that it’ll be your way of saying it’s time to enjoy a movie with others.
Even though you’re gone… I know you feel my sadness, I know you feel my heart with everything that I’m going through. Even though it might not be pleasant watching me go through this, know that each tear that’s shed and each emotion that’s worked up, is all just with the true love that I continue to have for you in my heart because I love you.
Your warm embrace was reassurance of the love you had for me. Your heart is what I fell in love with. Your joy brought me the most love and light I’ve ever experienced. Your smile will always be remembered. Your touch I can still feel. Your laughs I can still hear. Your’ hugs and kisses I miss every day.
All these things helped create the essence of the love we shared and it will always be valued and cherished.
Your ashes will always be carried with me and will serve as a reminder that we’re all human headed to the same place and because of that, I know I’ll see you again..
I love you
I continue to love you and will always love you..
Sincerely,
Your Squirrel
🐿️❤️ 🐻
♄Brian ☾ Jamesøn♃ 