The Problem with Hot Pockets...

As we sit at two days till 120 I am reminded of things that no one wants to be reminded of.  Tonight I went down to the deep freeze in the basement opened it up to grab some chicken to make for dinner.  You would think that a deep freeze is a safe place, except what I'm learning, what we are learning is there really is no safe place, there really is not time table, and there really is no better, there's today..and then there's tomorrow, and then it just keeps going.

I've tried to keep my thoughts and feelings in some semblance of order, and when bigger things hit I've tried to write them so I can, what I dunno, look back and get sad again.  It just feels important for some reason and I do it.  Maybe just so that I don't keep carrying so much in.  

This week has been harder than most.  I know that this is not news to people, I'm sure seeing me around reading what I write or whatever it's easy to understand that Aaron's not okay. Sometimes though it helps to know why I guess, who knows.  So this week's problem actually started a few weeks ago on a Sunday.  

We are in what I'm calling the gauntlet, that's the best way to describe it as far as I'm concerned. It's this time that starts with the beginning of the school year and culminates in the fall birthdays.  September 1, September 10, October 1, and October 7th.  My entrance into the Gauntlet came a couple Sunday's ago.  We were driving home, and if I've already told you this dear reader please just bare with me, as we were we hit the bike shop in Girard and all of a sudden it was just a day that I couldn't do anymore.  I came home shut my door and cried myself to sleep, the events pile up and at any given moment I run into things that I just don't really see myself doing again, even things that I loved and enjoy...in some cases am still very fond of just don't seem to be working out.

I'm a gamer, love video games and table top games and all of them, but there are entire games that I'm at the end of or really far into that Josie was either a part of, or would curl up and watch that I just can't bring myself to even turn on.  I'm literally at the final boss in a game that I played the week before the world stopped turning,  I did the fight like twice and then just shut it off, and though it defies logic, and though I know better it's like my brain tells me if I don't finish these things that I've started maybe just maybe I'll wake up and it will all be the replay of the nightmare I've had for the last 19 years give or take.  The one where I lose them to a horrible accident, except I don't wake up.  The game not being finished doesn't work it's magic, nor does keeping my Switch charged but not turning it on. Bringing myself to sit at a table and play with markers and cards and dice, moving my chosen piece around the board and collecting or figuring out or avoiding just doesn't work..Opening the game cupboard to find the covid 19 game she made stuck in with Monopoly and Risk or Clue just slams into me and makes me want to go away from everyone.

Sundays are hard but not the only hard day, any day where I have to do life can be hard.  And so the list of never agains gets added to...

Star Wars, which as most of you know is one of my favorite things, is just an off limits thing now.  I can't bring myself to watch them or read them or even think about them.  I've skipped Falcon and the Winter Soldier, as well as Loki, I can't imagine a Marvel anything, which is hard...I can wear the shirts, but turning it on just is a no go. 

Driving places can become an exercise in locating different ways to get places so that you don't have to see the park that she loved, or the place you rode bikes together, or ...or ...or...

Which brings me to last night and today....

Last night I went down to the deep freeze to see if we had something in it to make for dinner, as I was grabbing the chicken it happened again.  See I thought she had finished the last of her Hot Pockets.

 She liked em and she would many times get two and ask if I wanted one, or I would make her one, but see the box was gone because they were gone I thought, had been for a while since before the day life turned to hell...except they were't gone..there was one left tucked into the door of the fridge, must have fallen out and she stuck it in there, just touching it slammed into me and I went upstairs and cried and cried, ugly cried. I'm not a big hot pocket person but that was something that she would share with me, I still remember when I got the big box of them and her eyes when she saw it and her smile, I think she liked them because she could make them and share them.

Today taking some stuff back to the rehab place as I sat outside on the bench because I couldn't find my mask, which was in the back of the car after all, Facebook slammed into me again with a memory...this one from many years ago, of a little girl on her hands and knees in the sand doing the strangest thing. Crawling over the sand with her head down plowing rows into it.  She came over to me and wanted to know what I had in my hand, it was her sand art, and when asked what she was doing she said.."making a surprise for you. That's the thing about Josie...she always was making a surprise for someone.  Leaving a note on a smart fridge to be found not just months but years later, hiding among us imposters for people to find...making time capsules to open in the Summer...a summer that never came.. a time capsule that sits on my desk at home and stares at me pulling the tears from my eyes the sobs from my soul the anger and frustration and pain to the surface.  

All of these things make me just not want to exist.  I've said it multiple times. I just don't want to do this life thing without her.  I don't think any of us really want too but here we are.  Doing the next thing because that's all that can be done and to be honest sometimes not even that works.

And so there we are 120 days later and I'm not better off than I was on day one or day two or day ten.  In some ways it's worse, and that's what's so frustrating and maddening and terrifying.  Knowing that things can never be different, and so feeling that it would be so amazing if things just weren't.

See ya around the Blog...