The heavy one...

Time is strange. Two years suddenly feels like an awfully long time. Two years! How the hell have I survived for two years? How did that time pass? How can it feel like only yesterday that I was living my old life yet how, at the same time, does that old life feel like an eternity ago? How can I feel connected to that old life, yet so far removed from it? How can I be the girl whose husband died? How can I be the girl that takes off on a whim and does ridiculous (but totally amazing!) things like jumping out of a plane? I struggle to connect the two. But then maybe I don't have to.

I hadn't thought properly about the vastness of time that makes up two years until I was chatting to my ever-loyal friend, GB, last night. He said he couldn't believe that two years had passed; both in terms of T not being there, but also in terms of what I've achieved, both literally/physically and emotionally, in that time. It really made me think. So here you have it (with special thanks to GB for the inspiration - and everything else xx)...

1) I really feel that there's a Before T (BT) and an After T (AT) - by which I mean a time that existed before T's accident and has now ended, and a time that has existed since T's accident and continues to exist (although within the latter, there are many many subdivisions of time). I've never experienced such a clear separation between two states in my living memory. I feel like I've been reborn, like I've lived two separate lives. One life ended. Boom. And at that exact same moment, a new life began. A piece of me died alongside T, that's for sure, but I believe a piece of me was also infused with our combined energy and was reborn. I started again. Everything in time AT is new, yet unlike our infancy, I am aware and can recall things from this period. An infant can't remember the first taste of its mother's milk, or the thrill of saying its first word, or the highs and lows of learning to walk. But I can remember all the equivalent firsts in my life AT. And that's kind of weird. Time AT is vivid and brash and clear and bright and, I guess, shiny and new. It's hard to articulate.

Like infancy, there have been highs and lows during this rebirth and infancy. There's been lessons to be learnt and a lot of trial and error. There's been tears and laughter, tantrums and nightmares. Olds, news, firsts and never agains. There's been hope and dreams. Comfort and being comforted. Being oblivious to time and space - simply existing. There's been nourishment, both physical and emotional, and subsequently there's been growth and progress and momentum. And there's been an awful lot of love. At times it's been the worst time of my life; at others, ironically, the best. It's been horrendous and amazing in equal measure. And this fascinates me.

So life AT is a the other end of the spectrum to life BT. It's a whole new life. As I said, everything is new - tastes, smells, sights, feelings. Everything. This sometimes makes it difficult for me to remember what my BT life was really like. How did it feel to live that life and not know any differently? How did it feel to be that girl - that vulnerable, naive, emotionally-dependent girl who worried a lot, and overthought and wasn't really living life in the purest sense of the word (some of which still applies to the girl that exists in time AT, btw!)? Yes, life BT will forever be etched in my memory, and in my heart, but I find it hard to imagine living that life now. And equally, life AT obviously doesn't involve T in a physical sense. He's not in the photos, he can't share the memories. Through no choice of my own, life AT is all about me. Like an infant one day recognising its reflection in a mirror, I'm learning to recognise me again, or maybe I'm seeing that reflection for the first time, exposed in the cold light of day without life's cotton-wool cocoon.

2) I often feel far far far removed from what happened two years ago. I feel like it relates to a favourite book or film. I have such empathy for the people this horrendous thing happened to. I feel their pain. I have such enormous sympathy for them. I can picture the aftermath, the exact sequence of events, the phone calls, the motions they went through, the emotions they experienced, the grief, the loss, the hurt. But nothing like that could happen to me. Not because I'm immune to bad things, but because I couldn't possibly have the strength to see me through the death of the person I love most in the world. Nor the strength and emotional resources to subsequently exist. And not just exist, but to seize life with two hands and shake it and run with it and taste it and smell it and really and truly live it. Increasingly accompanied by a smile and a peal of laughter. I couldn't do that. But, and please excuse the language here but this phrase expresses the sentiment exactly, fuck me, if that isn't exactly what I have done! It's difficult to correlate these two feelings.