Finch

Hi Jgillen. I am very sorry for your loss. In a short space of time, I have found the people in this place to be empathetic, supportive and a source of comfort at my lower points, and I hope you find the same.

Hi Mitch, I probably don't have anything useful to add but just wanted you to know I read your post and I'm sorry you are hurting from reading the letter and looking at the pictures, and I am thinking of you. Tammy and the special love you shared changed you forever and in that, she will be a part of you and with you forever and always.

Thanks. I will try. I will try to manage these fears and thoughts and have faith she is with me. At least I know my heart. And she's with me there. I can feel her, right now. Marg, thanks for relaying those things about your son and Billy. I understand how powerful that moment must have been when you found the ring in a place you had already looked. I have many things of Crystal's. Important, meaningful things she sent me over the years. I still have open on the floor the box she sent me at Christmas/Hannukah, weeks before she died, and there are still gifts in it I have not opened. I want to hold onto them because opening them means there will be no more gifts from her.. No more Christmases or Hannukahs for us to share and I don't want that to ever be the case. Knowing they are there... Things she has touched. They give me some comfort. But I also realise one day I have to pick that box up off the floor and put it somewhere.

Hopefully. I know she wouldn't feel any differently towards me. I just have this recurring fear that because we never physically met or touched, she will be trying to 'find' me but won't be able to. That she will be in distress trying to find me. I know this is irrational, but I have nightmares about it.

Thanks kayc. I like the thought of a complete knowledge, not restrained by body or mind. I hope Crystal would be as aware of me as George is with you. I try and apply the logic and physicality of life to what I perceive the afterlife might be like, which I suppose doesn't make sense, because it wouldn't necessarily follow the same or even remotely the same rules.

I'm finding this too hard. The regret that we never met in person is killing me. Our love deserved us to meet, 11 years of love. Now we never can. I wish I had not been so afraid. It seems so silly now. I'm so scared that if there is an afterlife, because we never met, we will not be able to find each other, and we will stay apart for eternity.

Thanks Marg. I've been on these (Mirtazapine) for about a month and a half. There seemed to be an immediate impact (I also couldn't seem to physically cry, like you) but they have leveled off significantly. I'm so sorry to hear about the chronic depression and the family issues with addiction. I don't know much about Xanax, but I hope you have found the right balance.

I'm finding today really tough. I know it's Mothers' Day in the US. And I keep thinking of Crystal's two young kids having to go through it without her. I can't bare the pain they must be going through. And the pain her own parents must be going through. I feel so helpless and frustrated being on the outside of their grief. I spent today visiting my own family, including my 2 year old niece. I can't enjoy my time with her, because it just makes me think of Crystal - I would always tell her how my niece was doing and she'd love to see pictures of her. I'm currently feeling lower than I have felt since I started on the anti-depressants.

Hi Fabian, I am very sorry about what happened. I started seeing a grief counselor just a few weeks after my bereavement, which was also somewhat sudden. Like you, it was my sister who particularly encouraged me to do it. I'm still seeing them now 4 months later and I do find the sessions helpful, particularly in trying to deal with guilt and regret. There has been some good practical advice and he has been a good 'anchor point' on my journey. I see mine once a week but there is no reason why you couldn't space it out more if that suited you. You could try 1 session and see how it goes. If it's not for you then no harm no foul. However, only you know when you are ready.

Thank you kayc for those links. I'm sure I will be able to eventually track her down. I have to. I will make it to Crater Lake one day. I've never flown more than 2 hours but I am determined to do it for her. Thanks scba. I have been working this through with both my therapists for weeks and months. I am somehow expecting a resolution, to suddenly have a eureka moment where I have solved this puzzle of regret, guilt and grief, and I find myself unable to accept the reality that there is no real solution to the puzzle. I don't want to accept it. I can't accept it. It feels like accepting it would condemn me into an eternal pit of despair with no hope whatsoever. I cling to an imaginary construct that somehow, I wake up from this nightmare, because the thought that this defines my life now is too much to bear. It's too unreal. I'm glad that the second year for you is a little less dark. I sometimes find myself reading other threads in this forum and putting myself in the shoes of the poster, and finding that what they are saying is very reflective of some of the feelings I am experiencing, so much so that I could be saying them myself. For this reason, in my head I just change the names to Crystal and Finch. Not to diminish at all the experiences and pain that people are posting about, but because I deeply relate to them and I need to feel like I am not alone in this, and selfishly, it helps me to do this. I know everyones' grief is their own, and sacred, and I don't like to trespass on it.

I want to thank you all very much for your responses and for sharing your own stories. I am sorry for the belated reply. I hope you don't mind if I relay a few more of the thoughts I have had since I last posted here a few weeks ago. I do not feel I can post anywhere else other than this topic at the moment, and it seems like I come here when I am at my lowest ebb. I started on some anti-depressants recently, prescribed to me by my doctor, and they had an immediate impact. My thought processes became fuzzier and it was harder to think about things, to ruminate on them, and I even found it harder to physically cry. I didn't like what they did to me, but they did reduce my panic attacks that I have been suffering since Crystal died. However, they are starting to level off now and the despair and what I felt before is returning. I'm sure my doctor will up my dosage as a result, but I feel like a brief window has reopened at the very heart of my grief. It's been 4 months now. I zig zag between feelings of regret and guilt to just missing her and not knowing how I can continue without her. Today I have been replaying in my head some of the things from her last days. I know this is common, and I know that in the scheme of things, these are minor details, but... it is what it is, and it plagues me. In her last few days, the message I managed to get to her through her friend - that I was 'thinking of her' - I didn't want that to be my last message. I wanted it to be that I loved her. 'Thinking of her' doesn't even begin to do justice to our love. But I was worried about what to tell her friend being that she had no prior knowledge of our relationship and I couldn't tell her to say what I truly wanted to. I didn't want to risk scaring her friend off as she was my only way to get a message to Crystal while she was at home, medicated and surrounded by hospice care, her family and her husband. I read back through my messages with this friend of hers and I saw I did tell her to also say that 'Finch sends his love'. But she just told Crystal that I was thinking of her. I don't assign blame to her friend for this. To her I was a complete stranger and she only had my word that I knew Crystal. But I wanted Crys to know in her last days that my love for her was as strong as it ever had been. I wanted to comfort her with my words if I couldn't physically be there to kiss her. I know she will have known this deep down but I can't stand the thought that this was the last thing she heard from me (indirectly). It makes me physically angry that I didn't somehow manage to get a better message to her. If I think logically I know that it was an achievement to get any message to her given the circumstances of our relationship, the fact that noone knew I existed and the speed with which she went downhill so fast. And the last time I did actually speak to her on the phone, I told her I loved her and she told me she loved me. I don't want 11 years of love and friendship to be distilled into these few moments of regrets. But I can't help it. I know that in reality, she maybe wasn't even lucid enough to understand much of any message. She was highly medicated. And also... it's highly possible her friend said more or less, but either way, I cannot know as I am no longer in contact with her. I still don't know where she's buried. I still haven't yet contacted her Dad. I'm waiting for the right time. I want to ask him what happened to the box of gifts I sent Crystal at Christmas. She never got round to opening the final few gifts. I have this fear that her husband found them and disposed of them. He must have found them when going through her things after she died. He's probably found all the letters and gifts and everything. All I can do is check the Facebooks of her friends and family like some weird stalker to get any kind of update... to feel in some way connected to her life still. I saw that they all did a 5K Colour Run for Crystal... coincidentally on my birthday. I saw picture and video of them all there, together, united, being happy and celebrating her life. But her soulmate was not there. At least I saw her kids were ok... well, they seemed to be anyway. There is only so much you can tell from a photo or video. That was a big relief for me anyway. I have been so worried about them. I regularly return to that tree I carved our initials on. I put a flower there every time, against the tree, and I speak to her. I spend my time trawling through 11 years of our emails and letters. I found one where she told me that if I ever came to the US, I would love Muir Woods in California, and Crater Lake in Oregon. I want to go to these places, for her. But I just wish I had been brave enough to go when she was alive. To go with her. Or to go myself and tell her all about it. I'm sorry Crystal.

Hi everybody. Thank you. I am very grateful that you took time to respond to my post. I came to this website really because I am desperately seeking something. Desperate to find some kind of resolution. Or just desperate to do something that can fix me. I feel broken. I know that the only resolution is talking and time and finding peace with things. But I can't currently forsee things getting any easier. I know if I look at it with logic and cognisance and hear about other peoples' stories, that time really does lessen the pain, or change it, but right now it feels like there is no way out. I visited the tree again today that I carved our initials on. I spent ages there and I was at the very depths of despair. Crying and talking to her and begging her to come back and telling her I can't do this without her and I don't want to do this without her. Apologising for not being brave enough. kayc and WolfsKat, thanks for relating that you have similar stories in the way you met your partners George and Connor online. It's so fantastic that you found this love. I'm so sorry for your losses. I see your lovely avatar pictures of what I presume are you and your partners and it makes me sad. Sad because you were brave enough to make that step of meeting physically. I was not. There will never ever ever be a picture of me and her together. Because we never were together in that way. Because I was not brave enough, because I was scared. I didn't make that 'leap of faith' that you both did. Because of my stupid anxieties. I couldn't give her what she truly wanted. I will carry this with me forever. The pain is so great. I keep playing over in my mind the various points over the 11 years where she encouraged me gently to make that step but I was afraid. I know though that to a degree she was happy with what we had. What we had was amazing and special and beautiful. Otherwise she wouldn't have stuck with me for 11 years, while staying married! She was so patient. She understood me. She was my muse. We have so many amazing memories of laughter and smiling. In her last Christmas card to me she wrote: 'You bring joy to my life. Every day. Thank you.' I hang onto this, and various other things she would regularly tell me that reaffirms how much I meant to her, with everything I have. It's all I have left to try and combat the feelings of regret and guilt and try and stop my emotions from rewriting history. I just wish..... you know, when you love someone for so long.... but... you never even got to hug them? Just once. I just want to hug her once. A love so strong deserves that, doesn't it? A true love. To hold the one you love in your arms. A fairytale with a fairytale ending. I wanted to give her that. I want it for me now. I waited too long. I should have been braver. Especially when she got diagnosed with cancer. But I thought there was more time. I wasn't ready. I didn't want cancer to be the reason I finally did it. I wanted to be ready. I was going to do it. So I have this... unfinished thing. This circle of love that is incomplete. And I can never complete the circle. And I have to live with this. I'm so sad I can never hold her hand. Kiss her lips. Kiss her cheek. Just.... be with her. It's agonizing. It makes me want to die. I feel like there is this wall between us that I can never break down. Brad, thank you for your words. I am sorry for the loss of your wife Deedo but I am glad that you have managed to find some growth in the nine months since you lost her. I wish for you that you continue to find hope. kayc yes, one of the counselors I am seeing specialises in grief. He has talked with me about eventually moving onto CBT as a way to cope. scba, thank you. Yes, I have told my family and friends here pretty much everything. So at least I am not a ghost on this side of the Atlantic. They honestly have been great to me. ChinUp, thank you for the book recommendation. I will look into it. Like I mentioned, I don't really believe in it. But... I have a very open mind. MargM, thank you. I hope to find some peace here. To read other peoples' experiences makes me feel less alone. That's a good start. MartyT, thank you very much for the information you posted. I will look into those links. And thank you for welcoming me here. I have taken the first steps but it all feels so daunting. Thank you all. I want to tell you, that the name of my beautiful partner and soulmate was Crystal. My real name is Anthony. She called me Finch. That was my online alias when we first met online. We met in an online chatroom in 2004 and that was my name. So I call myself Finch on here in tribute to that. I am 35. She was 38. She gave me her Dad's email address once, should we ever lose contact. I have not got in touch with him yet. But I hope to, and I hope it helps me find some way of connecting back with her life.... that's if he understands. I don't want to upset him by being this strange person he has never heard of who not only knows everything about his daughter but all aspects of her life. From what I know of him, he is fairly conservative and I don't know how he will react when he discovers there was this man across the Atlantic. I will probably be very cautious at first and just say we were penpals. I just want to know how the kids are. I saw them grow up from when they were born. I know everything about them. I want to know how her dogs are. I feel a part of her life. I can't let go of it. It's not fair. As I type this I have tried anti-anxiety meds diazepam for the first time. I don't feel less anxious, that's for sure. But it's a small dosage.

Hello. 3 months ago, I lost my friend of 11 years to breast cancer. It happened suddenly when treatment seemed to be going ok. - It was a long distance, unusual and complicated friendship. She lived in the USA, me in the UK. - We would text, phone, skype, email every single day. Every day. Write letters. Send gifts every Christmas. I wear clothes she bought me on most days. - It wasn't just a friendship. We loved each other. And I do mean loved in the strongest possible terms. Loved. Soul mates. 11 years. - But it was complicated. She had two young children from her marriage - they stayed married but probably just for the children. - She didn't tell her friends or family about me. I was her secret. I am a ghost. - The husband however does know about me - he's the only one who does - but I have not contacted him. He disapproved of our friendship I think. Which is understandable. - I secretly see her friends and family on Facebook, see them mourning together. - I grieve alone on this side of the Atlantic. - I have deep regrets and guilt related to our relationship. The regrets are the most painful thing. - We never physically met. I know this might sound strange to people reading this. I was too scared I wouldn't live up to who I was to her at a long distance. 11 years. She was so patient. I realise now she would not have cared. She would have loved me in person for who I was. I have a history of social anxieties. I was too scared. I'd give anything to meet her just once. - I was planning to potentially finally meet her this year. I had not told her my plan though. I wish I'd told her my plan. Maybe she'd have kept going. - We thought she'd keep going. We thought the treatment was working. She said she could keep going for years. - I never got to say goodbye. It happened so fast. Her family and husband were around her bed as she died. Not me. Not the one she truly loved. I'm scared that in her sedated state, she wanted me there. I'm scared that she might have gone through those thoughts. I want to die. I only found out she had days to live after contacting one of her friends by Facebook after I had not heard from her in 2 days - like I say we were in contact every day, so I was worried when I didn't hear from her - and I introduced myself as a penpal. I managed to get this friend to give her a simple message - that I was thinking of her. I couldn't tell the friend what I really wanted to say. - I don't know where she's buried. I have no closure. - I carved our initials into a tree in a local woods. That's the only place I can go. - Our friendship was so beautiful. We told each other we loved each other every single day. We laughed so much together. We supported each other through the hard times. I was there for her always. She was there for me always. - I want to know how her children are. I watched them grow up. From being born to now. 6 and 10 years old. - I find each day is a struggle. Every minute is a struggle. - I have severe panic attacks every morning. I wake up and realise she's gone. Over and over. Every day reliving it. - I sob every day. Regularly. - My world is dark and grey. - I feel like 90% of me died with her. She was my muse. - I keep checking my phone, waiting for her to text. - I regularly feel like I can't or don't want to go on. - I saw my doctor who has prescribed me anti-anxiety and anti-depressants. - I am seeing two separate counselors. - Considering seeing a medium. I don't even believe in that stuff. I'm desperate. - I have friends and family that support me. I couldn't ask for more from them. - But none of it is enough. - My heart is broken. I am broken. - This is not a life. - I need her.