Here comes the missing stage, the stage in which I miss her.
I cannot stop thinking about what it was like: the comfort, the contentment and the closeness. I very much miss her and our dogs. All four of them. I even miss having to sleep in the tiniest corner of the bed, fighting for even the smallest bit of space as we all did our best to fit.
I miss that connection. That contact.
Friends and friendliness are one thing, but that close connection of two humans bonded together is a truly remarkable thing. I am fully aware that all of that is over, but I cannot help myself from dwelling on how good yesterday once was. Even with the infidelity.
I know it was not always bad times. In fact, the vast majority of it was good times. Even amazing times at times. I know it was the complacency that killed us. The fatal assumption that it would be this way for ever. And no work was really needed in order to maintain the good times. That was incredibly foolish on my behalf. This lesson should have been learned without the collapse of us. I really do wish I had learned it prior to this moment in time.
Unfortunately, I am the sort of idiot that can only learn through burn. I was always the child that had to touch the hot plate to know it was hot. I could never learn through lesson.
None of that matters.
What matters is the fact that there is no back on this linear perception of time. Only forwards. Forwards into something less certain, less defined, less predictable. And again, that does not change the fact that as the sun sets a little earlier and rises again a little bit later, as the air turns a little bit more biting cold, I think more and more of that bed and how it fit, her, myself, Boni the Amstaff, Clyde the Podenco, Bella the Ratonero and Biggles the Mixed.
I have tried to erase everything about her from my mind and memory. I have removed her from all social media and filed away all the photos and memories into deep files so as not to trigger memory. But what of my dogs? I can never file them away, yet nor can I dwell. Dwelling leads to stagnation which leads to death.
So here I am, in the middle of missing. It is a good season to feel the missing. It is cold in my bed for one without the warming comfort of contact, connection and contentment. I want that again, but I do not want to ever have it again for fear of it being taken away again. As a result, I find myself walking this emotional tightrope between wanting to move forward and wanting to go back to what is familiar, warm and comfortable.
And I have no idea where to go.
Which leaves me with one choice really. Raise my fists and take on life. Work harder on my body, my mind and my emotions. For me. I have no one else to do it for now.
I just wish I could write this and then share my bed with someone close and someone warm.
