Don’t read this.

I haven’t written in a long while. I think I was hoping to come back with something positive and inspirational but I’ve got to be honest – year two has been pretty short on positive and inspirational so far. In fact it’s mostly been bleak and unrelenting, which is both hard to live through and boring to read about. So, er… turn back here, I guess?

I can’t even pinpoint why things have got so bad recently. It’s been almost two months since I went into this “dip” and I haven’t really been able to find a way out of it for longer than a couple of hours. Things are just… dark. I pretty much constantly feel on the verge of tears and I have very little motivation for anything. I’m barely keeping going with the things I have to do – work, childcare, cooking, cleaning, laundry – and there’s really no energy left for anything else.

I just… miss him. I miss the contentment he brought to my life, the sense of home. The way that when he was around, everything was just… good. Simple and quiet and lovely and good. I keep having these waves of panic – he’s really gone. He’s not coming back. It’s just me – me and Lyla for now, sure, but after that, once she’s grown up and I’ve done what I need to do, just me. It’s so bleak. My life with him used to stretch out in front of me with such certainty – I knew that no matter what else happened, he would be there, and it would be me and him and we would be happy and in love and finding joy in each other. That never faltered, not for a moment – not through house moves and stress and losing our baby and post-natal depression and everything else we faced together – our joy in each other remained a constant. I had no reason to ever suspect it might not one day. And I’m still reeling from losing it, a year and a half on.

The things I’ve lost feel insurmountable. My best friend. My soulmate. The love of my life. The person who knew me inside out and loved me anyway. The person who made me laugh, who shared my interests, who peppered our conversations with inside jokes that only we would ever get. The one who held me when I cried, and celebrated with me when I succeeded, and made me laugh when I was angry at the world. My co-parent. The only other person in the world who loved our little girl the way I did. It’s too much to lose. It’s impossible to go on without it.

People say to me all the time that what Mike and I had was special. That they could see that the love we shared was once in a lifetime stuff, that many people don’t ever get to experience that kind of love. And last year I was always so grateful that I’d got to experience it at all. But now part of me almost wishes I hadn’t. Because trying to keep going without it when you’ve experienced it is just unbearable. Life is devoid of colour and things I found joyous before are just… flat, because he’s not there to share it with. And because I know, I KNOW, I’ll never find it again. Not like that. And so how can life ever be anything other than lesser? And how do you go on knowing that the best part of your life is over and it can’t come back?

I don’t have any answers. I wish I did. I’ve done everything I can think of to do to get through this and it’s still so hard and getting harder. I don’t know how to go on, I don’t want to go on, I can’t go on. And yet I know I have to, for Lyla, because I love her more than anything and I could never leave her, not when she’s also lost the most wonderful person in the world.

I don’t know why I’m writing this, really. I’m sorry.