As I sit here on the eve of what should be my 8th wedding anniversary, I can't help but notice everything I'm not feeling anymore. There has been so much to feel in the past 2 years and 10 months that I've lost all of the feeling in my heart.
Several years ago, Dustin and I always made this night a special night. It was our thing. Our tradition to start celebrating our anniversary. We didn't have hardly any money so we wanted to make sure we made our anniversary as special as possible and let it last as long as possible. We'd reminisce through our wedding pictures, joke about the things that went wrong, bask in our love for each other and eventually fall asleep next to each other. It was a special night for us and we looked forward to it every year.
The January before Dustin left for Korea, we FINALLY got to celebrate our anniversary by actually going out. My amazing sister gave us a paid in full, including the babysitter, date night for our Christmas present. We immediately knew we wanted to save it for celebrating our 5th anniversary. Perfect one to finally be able to celebrate!! 5 years!! We had made it to 5 years of marriage, had 3 healthy kids with a fourth on the way, several moves and apartments, a base house, several cars and too many animals to count. But we had survived it all! The good, the bad and the ugly. That night is one I will never forget! It was the most perfect night we could've ever asked for. Little did I know that would be the very last anniversary I'd be celebrating with him alive, though.
After I lost Dustin, I didn't know how to celebrate our anniversary anymore. How do you celebrate something so meaningful when the person you want to celebrate with is no longer alive?! I decided I'd keep up our traditions that first anniversary and just write it in my journal. I quickly realized that was too painful. The next year I decided to celebrate it with our kids. Good idea in theory, right? They could care less right now because of their ages. Which I get. But now that brings me to tonight.
Numb.
Emotionless.
Detached.
How? How did I end up here? Let me tell you. In grief there is so much physical pain that you start to not feel anymore. Things just seem to not even register on the rector scale of pain because you've gone so long feeling deep, immense pain in every second of every day. You know the ones you see in the hospitals where they have the faces and ask you to rate your pain on a scale of 1-10? Yeah, this pain is so deep, no number could equate to it. So, you start to form this big, rough callous over your heart to try and help save it from breaking into more pieces than it already has.
Now this pain sits there, getting deeper and deeper as the days pass without your person. It is a pain that is nonstop. It racks your spirit, mind and body. All day, everyday. And as you experience more life, this callous you've formed on your heart gets rougher in different spots because it has to. If it doesn't, you're afraid that you'll feel too much and then your mind will take you back to that day, those weeks and months right after they died. And then you have this wave of emotions come over you that you can't control. You don't know how long they will remain either, so out of fear, you work so hard to build that callous bigger and in a new spot. One you honestly didn't think would matter, but it does. It matters so much you'd rather be numb to it than feel any of it at all. Which is why I am numb, emotionless and detached tonight. I have had almost 3 years now of many life events I didn't think would matter. But they did and I needed to make my intricate callous.
Will this ever go away? Maybe one day. When I'm so old that I've experienced all that life has to offer me. But for now, this is how I live my life. One intricately placed callous at a time. And I still have a lot of life to live, so I suspect my callous to be the most beautifully intricate calloused heart you ever did see.
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