Remembering

One year ago to the day, I left on my first adventure post T's accident. On one hand, I can't quite comprehend where that year has gone; I can clearly remember the excitement and anxiety involved in the planning of my trip. And the intense emotions I felt as I locked up the flat, waved goodbye to my lovely friends at Heathrow and finally boarded the plane to NZ - I was pretty distraught right now a year ago. It feels like it happened just yesterday. Yet on the other hand, I can't really connect the girl I was then with the girl I am today, and so much has happened in the past twelve months, so in that respect it feels like I made that trip in another lifetime.

It's heartening to have these milestones, to be able to look back and compare where I was emotionally a year ago and where I am now. I sometimes struggle to connect the two, they are so disparate. Work has definitely helped me. It distracts me and fills the endless thinking space I had, and indeed needed, for so long when I wasn't working. But sometimes it makes me feel quite sad. For these milestones also mark an increase in the time since I last saw T, in the life that we were happily living together, in the future we thought we had ahead of us.

There's still a T-shaped hole in my soul - there always will be - and I miss him every single day. Yes, I'm amazingly strong and yes, I'm doing so well, and yes, T would be so freakin' proud of me, but it doesn't make the situation right or fair. I'd do anything to have T walk through the front door right now. I've got so much to tell him about the adventures, both physical and emotional, that I've been on since he left. I know he'd love to curl up with me on the settee with a nice cuppa and hear all about the new me. I know he'd be proud and happy and he'd tease me, telling me that he'd been trying to tell me all those things for years but I just wouldn't listen. He'd have a point! 

I'd also love to be boarding a plane to the other side of the world tonight, as I did a year ago, although I know I could never recreate that same emotional journey. I'm slowly losing that sense of perspective that I had in the early days. Well, not losing it exactly, I'll always have it, but once you've done something once, it's not the same the second time round. And the more I settle back into my new normal and the daily grind, the more I feel distanced from the girl I was a year ago. But I think that's a necessary and probably a good thing.

I wonder what I'll be writing on here one year from now...

I dedicate this post to the people of Christchurch, NZ who have been affected by the recent earthquake. And to my brave Kiwi friend LH, who is only a few hundred miles away from me right now (grrr, so close...) and who was my sanctuary when I got off the plane in Wellington, a little lost, anxious soul.