Toothbrush

The other day I moved my toothbrush out of the drawer in the bathroom and started keeping it in a jar by the sink. Mike's toothbrush is still in the drawer. That is it's home and I can't bring myself to get rid of it, but it hurts me every time I see it. So, I just took mine out so I don't have to open the drawer anymore.

I have a pile on my dresser of all the notes he's written me, receipts, ticket stubs, and all the mementos I've gathered from dates we've gone on. I keep thinking I should find a box to put everything in, but the idea of boxing it up just breaks my heart. So, for now, it will sit in a pile...maybe a hopeful pile...hopeful that maybe, somehow, things will get added to it and it won't have to be boxed up.

His pictures are still up around my room. I had such an emotional reaction to removing his photo from the background of my phone that I just haven't been able to take the rest down. I don't really look at them much...I just feel like it hurts less to just not deal with them than it would to remove them.



We both eat Girl Scout Thin Mints by freezing them and breaking them up into a bowl of milk. Now, I have three boxes of them and I just can't bring myself to eat them because all I can think about is how funny it was that he eats them the way I do.

I have a huge jar of Hot Tamales because we both LOVE them (another coincidence!). I would randomly bring him a bag or container full of them when I dropped food off for him or whenever we had plans. Now I have this huge, half empty jar sitting on my counter and I can't eat those, either, because they were for him.

I'm halfway through "The Smart Step-Family", one of the books we were going to read together and discuss. I really want to finish reading it because it was really good...but it's pointless now. I hate not finishing books.

I shared every single one of my favorite songs with him so now they all make me cry. We had sing-alongs to all our favorite musical soundtracks (Rent, Moulin Rouge, Phantom of the Opera) so I can't listen to any of those without getting all upset. I wanted to buy Les Miserables when it came out on DVD but that was our first date so, you guessed it, I can't do it.

I know that, overall, I'm doing better. I'm eating now, which is a huge improvement. I still can't eat much and lots of what I do eat makes me feel sick, but for the first 10 days or so I was unable to eat at all. I don't cry as much, but I still cry a lot and it still hits me at the most annoying times.

Work has gotten a little better. That first week after the breakup was torture and while I still don't feel like I have the energy to deal with the kids, at least I don't want to scream at them to leave me alone like I did the first week.

But even though things are better, I still can't help but think about what I lost. I still feel like I lost something I wasn't supposed to lose. I have dreams all the time about him, sometimes multiple in one night. One night he came back to me and told me he made a mistake and wanted me back. And the next night I found out he was dating someone else already. In one dream I was on Facebook and he had posted some statuses that let me know that he missed me and was really sad and lonely without me. And then another time, he proposed to me. And I wake up in the morning feeling like I would if those things had really happened, until reality kicks in a few seconds later.

One morning last week my sister called me when I was still sleeping...when I was awakened by the ringtone, my first thought was that it was my daily wake-up call from Mike and I was SO happy...and then I looked at the caller ID and saw that I was wrong.

The thought of completely letting go and giving up any hope of being with him down the road is just more than I can handle, but at the same time I don't want to hold on to something that won't happen. It leaves me in this constant state of "WHAT THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO DO??"

Every day, I pray to God to help me know what the next step needs to be. In the midst of those prayers I tell him that what I really want is for Mike to come back to me, and for things to somehow work out there. It's so hard to pray for God's will when the only thing I want is the one that I lost.