Finch

Glad you made it through in tact. My first Christmas without my love too. Checking in. I used to not be a big fan of Christmas time of year. A bit of a miserable grump. Crystal made me look forward to it alot. She also loves celebrating Chanukah with me. I'm back to being grumpy now. Still have some unopened gifts from her from last year. Don't want to open them. Want to keep them frozen in time. Visited the tree in the park I carved our initials into after I lost her. Left a candle there. Took a musical pen with me that she got me that has started playing of its own accord lately. It is a college football pen that sings the fight song of her team. Tried to communicate with her via the pen and a system of yes or no. Mixed success. Started talking to the pen in the middle of the woods. I've gone mad. Reading my Facebook timeline is a depressing thing, seeing everyone happy and with their families. Hope Crystal's family have got through it ok.

Darrel, my thoughts, like everyone elses' are with you. You will always have refuge here, no matter how dark things seem.

Wonderful news.

I don't know how to relieve the regret I have for not making that dream come true sooner. I haven't yet found a way to. I know it's no good to use hindsight and that you do what you do at the time. And I can tell myself that she was ok with not meeting, and that we were making progress and that we made each other happy every day. I have so much evidence of this in her written word and it should be something to celebrate, that I made her feel loved and wanted. But she is gone and I am left here, alone, with these thoughts. I can't find peace with the fact that I will never meet her now. Never hold her hand. I'll never ever know what it would have been like and it makes me feel like I want to die because I could have made it happen. It was in my power. I hate myself for being the way I am, having all these anxieities and for being too afraid. I'm so lonely without her. The thought of ever managing to meet someone else in the future makes me feel horrible guilt. I feel alot of pressure on me from family to meet someone and have kids etc. I did want to have kids one day. And if it wasn't with her than I thought she would at least be here to watch them grow up, like I watched her kids grow up. It all feels too much to think about.

Happy to hear the more positive news. All the best.

I am really sorry caitlynn. I'm glad you have found a way to move forward.

I'm sorry that you had that experience with George's family. I'm sure by now you know it doesn't diminish the meaningfulness or profundity of what you shared with him, even by 0.00001%. And as for the 'friends' that you lost - who needs friends like that? Nevertheless, it can only have made things more difficult for you at the time, and I'm sorry. I think it's become an obsession for me because it feels like a tangible a way to reconnect (in a small way) to her/her life, to lessen my pain.... that is just there beyond my grasp. Even if it made me feel better, it would likely make them feel worse. But that's why I brought it up here... because I'm fighting myself on this. Struggling to accept that I have to rule this out and be stuck with the what ifs forever. It's not just a selfish motive though - I genuinely wonder sometimes if I could actually help them. I really WANT to help them. It makes me so sad to think of how they must be suffering. With every anniversary, I think of them too. I know this sounds insane in some respects when essentially what we had was an extra-marital affair. I know that I am sounding deluded. I can step outside of myself and objectively know this. She did want her kids to know me. She would chat to me over Skype with them there. I spoke to them. Of course, they were young and to them I was just one of their mom's friends. And now with her gone, other people now have the mantle of taking care of them and deciding things for them. I just wish we'd talked about it a bit more. The practicalities of if something happened to her. We never got further than her telling me to contact her Dad. Just a week before she died she said I should get in touch with him if I didn't hear from her. So she was definitely ok with me speaking to him. And when she told me that at the time it made me assume he knew about me. But he didn't. So I don't know what she was thinking or what she meant by it. Did she mean 'contact my Dad, but just say you are a friend'? I'm so annoyed at myself that we didn't talk more about it. But neither of us expected everything to happen so quickly. Like many of us here.

They can't come to me with questions if they don't know I exist. But I take your point. It's not easy to add that perspective. To work out what is the right thing to do balanced against what I feel the need to do and what I think Crystal would have wanted. I'm trying, I really am.

Thank you all. Kay... yes, I think in part it would be for myself. In part in search of validation and to share my grief with other people that knew her. I do try and put myself in their shoes and think what it would be like to find out or even hint at that she had this secret life that she told noone about. I imagine it would be very distressing to them and I very very much do not want to cause them pain. God knows what they are going through. And that's half the problem. I don't know! From hearing about them every day, to nothing. Door slammed shut. It hurts me alot that I am behind this frosted glass of sorts where the rest of her family and friends can't see me. It's not even frosted, it's like a police lineup mirror where I can look in a bit but they can't see me. As I approach the 1 year from losing her, they all have each other. I still have so many unanswered questions. I am still seeing a grief counsellor and he generally advises to accept there are some things I will never get the answer to and that I cannot share in the family's grief. He also says he is concerned primarily about me and that I should do what I need to do to find closure, within reason, and that while I should respect the family, I need to consider what I want. He also talks about how I have no idea what is going through the husband's head or what he thinks of me and what impact my contact might have, much like what negative impact I might have had if I had flown over there in her last week. He thinks at some point I should go to America in a sort of pilgrimage. Not to her house. Just to places she wanted me to visit. Marg, I appreciate you relating your own experience. Your post was very painful for me to read and I cried because I accept that to a degree you are right and the truth hurts. Marty... no, there is no easy way for me to impart what I want to impart to them without them figuring out the obvious. The layers of complexity around it drive me mad sometimes. It's just so unfair. That all the love and joy we shared - this is what it deserves? To hide in the shadows anonymously, forever? I won't accept that. In the years to come, Crystal and I may have met and she may have ended up telling everyone about me. I'll never know now if that would have happened. Yes, the husband does know about me, in fact he's known about me for almost as long as I have known Crystal. They did not love each other in that way and he had accepted my existence of sorts. And he had an actual physical affair during that time! Crystal was very forthright to me in her opinion of him at times. Not that he was a villain. He cared about her and when she got cancer, being a doctor there was much more he could do to physically support her than I could from thousands of miles away behind a screen. By now he must have read every letter between us, and maybe her emails and everything else, everything personal, which makes me feel even more helpless and frustrated and like our relationship has been violated by eyes not meant for it. It was private and special, like you guys say, but he is privy to some of it and that hurts as I have zero control over it. What if I approached her friends rather than her family? I just feel desperate to try and re-connect to her life somehow. One of the last things she said to me was that she was going to hang up a framed poem in her new house, the same one she sent me for Christmas. We would both hang them up. So we would both share that. But it never happened. Where is the framed poem now? Maybe it was thrown away because noone knew what significance it had. Maybe everything I ever sent her has been thrown away or burned. It's these kinds of little things that mean so much, because such things had great significance throughout our relationship. The small things. I hate the thought that they might have been thrown away without a second thought. I don't know if I could ever write in a journal or book about this. It would just remind me of the tragedy of how it ended and of the unfulfilled promise. I guess I am writing about some of it here as an outlet. Everything stopped. Suddenly. Everything stopped. I'm going off on a tangent and rambling, apologies. I'm probably also repeating things.

Hi Marita. I'm sorry about the anniversaries and the pain you suffer from members of your family. Solace can always be found here. January 11th is my one year, 6 days later than yours but in the same ballpark. Let's get through the next few weeks. We can do it.

Latest thoughts I am having is that the relationship we had was a huge part of each of our lives, but because only we knew about it, it’s in my head and nowhere else. I feel like her family would love to know some of the stories and thoughts I could relate regarding Crystal. Not details about our relationship, not really personal, private things, but just things about her. Things that they won’t know! We shared practically everything. Would lean on each other in moments of need or joy. It’s unfair on her memory that such a big part of her life is essentially erased. I bet there are things I could tell them that would make them smile or laugh. And yes, cry. Not everything, not things that were really personal to us. Other things. The Crystal they are mourning is not 100% of the Crystal that existed. Ok, I get that they are mourning the Crystal they knew, parts of which I was not privy to. But they didn’t know all of her. And she doesn’t deserve to have some of her not remembered by the people that loved her. Ok, an example. Her plans to start her own photography studio. She planned this for a long time, and didn’t tell anyone about that, she wanted to have a plan in place first. But she told me. Wouldn’t her parents like to know that this is something she wanted to do? Or that she was thinking of seeing a counsellor, a few weeks before she died. That she was putting on a brave face for people but she was struggling to be, as she put it, a 'Pollyanna'. Or that her favourite painting was A Starry Night by Van Gogh. Who knows about this other than me? Her friends? Her husband? I don’t know! That’s half the problem. I don’t know how much of her is being remembered. She DOESN’T DESERVE not to be 100% remembered for all parts of her. The fact she entrusted me with all these things reflects on the connection we had, yes. But I feel like I owe it to her to honour her memory more by sharing these things. Or is what was private and personal between us, supposed to stay that way? Do I grow old with these things unspoken? Do I reach out to her husband, the only one that did know about me? Or has he by now read all the personal correspondence between me and Crystal and thus resents me more than ever? Do I track down her kids in 10 or 15 years when they are adults and tell them all these amazing things about their mother they never knew? Would they be grateful to learn these things, having lost their mum so early on and having a unique window into how she was via videos she sent me of her playing with them that they may not have seen because she talks to me in the videos and so probably had not shown anyone else? I even have a video of one of them saying hello to me which they probably won’t remember. Does this make me a weirdo? What if this leads them to question their father about me? If I was in her husband’s shoes, how would I feel if someone did that to me. I have had all these thoughts.

I send my thoughts for Noah.

Thank you. Every day we emotionally supported each other. Always there for each other, no matter what was happening in our respective lives, good or bad. Cheerleading each other through life's ups and downs. Every step of the way. I'm so lost without her. I am very thankful for the people in this place and the support they give, if not for the reason that brings me/us here. I hope you are able to tackle the eye infection, cyst, truck, cellphone and roof leak one step at a time, to make it seem less overwhelming.

Thanks alot. I hope you are having a better month this month. Are you? Unfortunately I can't say that I am. I'm so exhausted of all of this.

Thank you. I have had an uptick in anxiety recently. Was wondering if it was my meds becoming less effective. I've tried mindfulness on and off but not managed to stick with it. Focusing on breathing right now.

I have come to terms with realising I could not have altered her death. Well, mostly. I do still have irrational thoughts on that. I really struggle though to come to terms with not being there for her during that last week. Even though we never physically met and her family didn't know me, I think somehow I should have hopped on a plane and just been there for her. I know it's not realistic I could have flown over and barged into the house. Apart from anything, it would have probably caused alot of upset to her family and in a different reality I may be typing here right now about how I regret having done so and making her last days even more distressing. Who's to say they would have even let me in to see her. Maybe they would have called the police. Would she have even realised it was me? So many what ifs. I just can't deal with the fact that she may have wanted me there, in those semi-lucid final days, when she could no longer physically contact me. When all the while I was here trying to find out what was even going on, via her friend on facebook, while also having to tread carefully about what I said in case I said too much, while also desperately hoping things would turn around. Is there any use me talking about this? I cannot come to terms with this.

Thoughts going through my head recently. 1) My last phonecall with her was in a stairwell at my place of work. Every time I walk up or down that stairwell, I feel awful, remembering it. Because when I last spoke to her I had no idea it would be the last time. I find myself touching the walls there to try and feel close to her. 2) I keep thinking of all the things we shared about her kids and wondering whether their dad and rest of the family are aware of everything that I am. I have the urge to tell them these things. For instance a brand of potato chip I used to send her that the kids would try and really like. Or what video games they liked playing. They are now 11 and 7 years old so it's not as if they can't communicate these things themselves and I'm sure there is plenty about them that I don't know, but I feel like I would be able to unlock more of Crystal to them. I feel like they might appreciate it. Especially her parents. 3) I saw one of my therapists yesterday and I went through the timeline of Crystal's last week with her in great detail, which she had encouraged, as I had not fully opened up to her much. I read out to her the texts I exchanged with the friend I was in contact with during that time, who was relaying to me how Crystal was each day, and it brought it all back. It was so difficult. It reminded me how helpless and frustrated I felt, and how I was trying to balance wanting to say so much with worrying about having to be extremely careful not to reveal too much about my relationship with her. And the horror of not just not being with her when she died, but not being with her in that entire last week. A week of scant information, panic, fear, helplessness.

Do you ever have moments where the thoughts and feelings physically take your breath away?

Thank you, I have signed up for this.

I'm sorry, Cheryl.

I'm so sorry. I hope you can find others on here who have been through similar to you, and talk and relate to them. I hope that helps. Vincent Anthony are lovely names.

Hi Marita, Sorry that the feelings of incompleteness are so overwhelming and contributing to the lack of purpose you are feeling. I'm glad that you can look back on 3, 5, 7, 9 months ago and see some overall reduction in the frequency of pain, if not the intensity and profundity of it, and maybe use that to funnel into some hope or optimism for the future. And taking things minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day etc. Much like your plan of no plan over Christmas. I hope you find a way to get your tractor fixed. That's a nice horse you have there.

50 Christmases with your two families. Wow. That's truly amazing. Half a century. And the New Years Eve proposal. Gord sounds like a romantic fellow. And your love for him feels immense. No plan seems like a good plan for you and your son, doing what feels right and taking care of yourselves. Deep down I dreamed I'd one day spend Christmas with Crystal for real. It was a dream and it may never have happened. I sometimes hate myself in the strongest way for not being brave enough. It makes me sick to think that I might not have done it even 10 years from now, knowing what I know and feeling what I feel now. I hate myself. I've rationalised this all in counselling. That I was who I was and I can't change that. And that maybe what we had was special and unique because of the nature of it, and just what we both needed. And that the way we celebrated this time of year was special because it was between us. And what she did with the rest of her family was separate. I'm just writing my stream of consciousness now and trying to reassure myself. I was reading back through some old messages between us from a few years ago, and she was talking about how I made her feel loved and special. She made me feel that way as well. I should try and treasure how special this time of year was for us. A decade of shared Christmas and Hannukah traditions. I'm struggling to be restrained and not contact her dad again. Part of me wants to know what happened to my Christmas gifts from last year. The ones she never opened. I think it's because it feels like a way to be close to her again. I'm rambling now. I hope you also find peace as well over the next months, with all the firsts. Thank you. Thanks Kay and Marty. I will take a look.

I don't know how to get through the next couple of months. The 1 year anniversary of losing her is coming up in early January, and that's following Christmas. I'm absolutely terrified.