A scream.

I’m writing this on a phone so please forgive any typos and the inevitable brevity. This entry feels a bit like a scream I’ve been holding in for weeks and if I don’t get it out on paper it’s going to boil over into some kind of ugliness. So. Phone composition it is. Needs must.

What I’m struggling with is that life will never be as good again. How can it be? Mike was my soulmate in every sense. Everyone I speak to reminds me of that. That our love was something special. That many people never get to experience a love like it. That it was obvious from first meeting us that we were made for each other. I’ll never get that again. How could I? The chances of meeting Mike were so infinitesimal. The chances of meeting another person who sets my whole world alight, who completes and complements me in every way, who understands me and loves me wholly and fully and also happens to be the funniest, sweetest, silliest, most beautiful person I’ve ever met are essentially zero. They have to be. Nobody gets that lucky twice.

And then even if I did, even if by some miracle someone else came along who fulfilled me in that way and made me feel as loved as he did, they won’t be Lyla’s Daddy. They won’t love her in the way Mike did. They won’t have the shared memories of her infanthood, they won’t know how she liked to be sung to, how she used to do a little sigh in her sleep that sounded like a text alert tone, how we had to bounce her on a yoga ball to get her to sleep. They won’t be half of her. And on this fucking day, Father’s Day, that all seems more important than ever.

What I’m realising that is breaking my heart is that there’s no rule in life that things keep getting better. I think I always believed there was, and that they would. And they had – obviously we had been through tough times but ultimately the trend was upwards. Having Mike by my side was the security that life would keep getting better.

And now he’s not.

It feels impossible to go on with that knowledge, to know that I’ve hit the highest high and things can’t ever be that good again. That I’m almost certainly never going to find that kind of soul-deep connection, that intense love, that absolute wide-eyed adoration ever again. That my beautiful child will always be without her Daddy. It feels so pointless even trying, although I know I will, for Lyla. But it’s getting harder and harder. As the shock wears off and the hope gets extinguished, life gets duller and more painful. Every night now I go to bed with a headache from repressing tears all day, holding in this scream that is always threatening. Every night I have flashbacks to finding him, to screaming his name, to CPR and all the absolute horror that followed. Every day is bookended by that waking nightmare. And then I have to just get up and carry on and smile and interact with people and all the time I’m just internally screaming…

I just want to yell at everyone, shake them and ask how they can possibly be going on as normal when Mike, my Mike, my wonderful Mike is no longer in the world. I don’t want to be like that, full up with negativity and anger but I am. I worry that one day it’s all going to come spewing out, this toxic sludge of all the horrors I’m holding in, the flashbacks and the anger and the fear. And I have no idea what that will look like but I know it won’t be good.

Even now I want to minimise this, to say “it’s okay, I’ll feel better tomorrow, I just need some sleep”. But it’s not okay. I’m not okay. I’m drowning. And there’s nothing anyone can do because nobody can bring Mike back. Nobody can tell me – honestly and truthfully – that things will be okay, that I’ll be happy like that again, that Lyla will be okay. Nobody can hold this pain for me or stop the flashbacks or cure these fucking headaches. I have to just go on with it all. And it’s not fair. It’s not fair. He was the best thing in my life. The best thing in Lyla’s life. The best thing in the world. And now he’s gone and everything is worse and always will be.

How the fuck do I live with that?