What could've been

You must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you. – Joseph Campbell

The thought of even doing this scares me to my very core. Or at least what's left of it.

When you lose someone important in your life, you don't just lose that person; You lose the whole life associated with that person. And sometimes that's not very much, and sometimes...well, sometimes, it's more than you could've even imagined while they were still alive.

I grieve the loss of the children I will never have. Nowadays when I see little kids, I look for Chantz in them. It's silly I know, because they obviously look like their parents. Not him...or me. When I think about dying, or just not wanting to exist anymore, I think about the children I yet may still have, and the people who would grieve the loss of children that look like me. I don't know my future kids but I need to be here for them, don't I? I already love them, as ridiculous as that may sound. But I feel this overwhelming grief over the children Chantz and I were supposed to have one day. And we didn't even want to have kids until much later but it's as if I already knew them..even if it was ten years ahead. I'm not even a big kid person, as this may make me sound...but there's just something about lost possibilities that makes you yearn for them even more.We would spend time picturing and attributing them with our physical traits. We wondered what type of kids they'd be and what type of parents we would be. They would never be able to get away with anything because we were really rebellious kids and we knew all the moves. Chantz was going to be such a good father. He was going to be a jokester. He was going to teach them about music, science, bugs, plants and football. If we had boys he was going to teach them how to be handy inside and outside the house, and how to work on cars. (Chantz wanted to have a house that would one day be displayed in one of those house magazines. No joke.) If we had a girl, she was going to be his little princess. We both knew that just from the way he treated his beautiful younger cousin Maria. Like the little princess she is. He was also going to get them the teeny-tiny-piece legos instead of the big chunky ones so they could learn how to make intricate designs just like he did when he was a little boy. I was going to make them into giant bookworms, and teach them about amazing literature, art, psychology and philosophy. I was going to make sure they learned at least three languages and teach them about vegeterianism right away..hoping they would choose to become that on their own. He was going to play jokes on them just like his dad did all the time. One of my favorites was that when he was a little kid and they'd go to the grocery store and Chantz would be in the shopping cart his dad would push him and let go and start screaming "OH NO! I can't catch you...you're going too fast!" This would make little boy Chantz flip out thinking his dad would never catch up to him. He was looking forward to doing that. We would laugh every time that story was brought up. He was going to tell his kids all about his life, and be open with him, something he wished his dad had done with him. You were going to be a wonderful father Chantz.

Regardless of their feelings toward me, I miss his family, and even though my relationship with his parents had reached a limit toward the end of Chantz's life I still care about them. I love those who he loved. I miss his little cousins who we took to Six Flags the weekend before he passed away. I miss his dogs, Daisy and Weezy. His car, that he was so proud of. His room, I always felt safe in his man cave as he liked to call it. I miss hearing about his brother's life. About his friend's lives. A lot of people knew him...but he only cared for a handful..and those are the ones I miss. I miss our goodnights, and daily talks. Even our stupid fights. I miss that he understood my darkness...probably the only one thus far. And our humor....god, no one else gets it. And that bothers me.

I miss that he got along with my brother and that when the three of us would hang out, they would gang up on me. My family loved him and he loved them..I miss having him over for family get togethers. I miss that he wanted to learn Spanish and I would refuse because he only used it for evil, as I liked to call it. Or that he would call me up and tell me a random fact he had just thought of or learned. I miss how he ate like a beast and a child at the same time. He would put sugar in his frosted flakes. And chocolate powder in his ice cream alongside sugar, and chocolate syrup. He called it "The Monster Creation." It was disgusting. But for him, it was the best thing on earth.
I miss having someone to complain about the smallest discomforts, and hearing about his. I miss hearing I am loved and knowing it's true.

It's not just the person...it's a whole life that's gone.
And I used to feel selfish for missing that for myself, but I've learned that it's okay to grieve for the life I had and the one I will never have.
Puedes tener nostalgia por algo que nunca te a pasado? Por supuesto
I don't think I can ever look ahead the way I used to.



I never made Chantz my life, nor my sole purpose in life. I had dreams, friends, goals, and passions. In other words, a fulfilling life completely independent from him. He was a big part of it, but he wasn't my life. But since he left, it almost seems like he was my only reason for being. But, that's the grief talking.
(For anyone out there who's going through this,  please know that eventually you start remembering that there were other things that made your life complete. Even if it seems impossible to believe right now. The loss is just so profound that it makes everything else seem meaningless. It's normal, even if it doesn't feel like it)


Can I be happy living with your ghost?....maybe one day.

Bittersweet and strange, knowing you can change

Today was a good day.
This week was the first good week I've had in Texas since Chantz passed away.

Some take good days for granted because they are so common. I used to be one of those people.
Now, it's nearly miraculous.
I still cried...and my heart is still shattered...but among that, I felt okay too.
I felt like I could reallly survive this. I knew I would, but feeling it is a different thing. We are beings ruled by reason AND feelings. Sometimes the latter.

These are the things that made it a good week:

1. I am finally back with my precious kittens and they are so full of personality and innocence
2. I cooked a lot this week and made many things from scratch
3. I smoked only two cigarettes this whole week
4. I finished a book and am already halfway done a second one
5. A beautiful friend just got engaged!
6. I went to all my classes this week for the first time this semester
7. A friend lent me a video where Chantz is playing a show and then comes and sits next to me once he's finished. I got to see us interact for a few minutes and I even heard his laughter. It made my heart swell so much.
8. I watched Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin today. It brought back childhood happiness
9. I cooked for two friends tonight as opposed for just myself which is extremely lonely
10. I was super stressed over school, studying, and tests + not smoking at the same time, which made me feel like a normal college student for once in a very LONG time. It's refreshing to feel normal sometimes.
11. I remembered new memories of Chantz and I.
12. Before Spring Break I've cried every day since Chantz passed away. Now I can go a day or two between crying.
13. Tonight I heard the heart-wrenching story of a survivor of rape and a murder attempt. She's getting married next week.

I can do this. We all can. It just takes...wait for ittttt....my most "favorite" word....time

A month ago, I couldn't even think of three good things about any day.(Progress!)


I miss you.
Every day.
I will always love you but I think I need to start looking for the good in life again..one step at a time.
I know that's what you would want.
Please know that I am actually trying, I want you to see.
But also understand that I will stumble so much along the way
I love you very much.
-Your Veronica

A breath for the wounded soul

The one thing I am afraid of the most is not being able to see Chantz ever again. To not be able to hear his laughter...he had this one laugh, that I heard only about seven times the six years I knew him; it was like he had never heard anything funnier in his life. It was full of abandonment and pure joy and I always told him that it was my most favorite laugh in the world. It really was.I'm scared that I wont be able to hear or watch him play his guitar ever again. I swear, when he played, he was completely transformed. No one could touch him there. He would move in a snake-like manner when he really got into it, and the first time I brought it up he had no idea what I was talking about. I think that's what I loved most about him. He was so full of life and passion and sometimes he didn't even notice.

-----

In other news,
I went out of state this past week and I think that aside from having gotten my two kittens in the last couple of months, this has been the most helpful thing thus far.
I needed to leave Texas and be somewhere where I had never been to in my life. (New Orleans)
It felt like I had been suffocating for the last seven months, and I was finally able to breathe.
It felt like I had no history, like I had never met him or been in love and therefore never lost him.
I smiled and laughed and I could actually get him out of my head for hours at a time.
I saw glimpses of my old self too. It was surreal.
We stayed in a hostel and met wonderful people, and they knew nothing about me. It was beyond refreshing.
I talked about books, art, psychology, traveling, and history with so many people and I felt passionate again.
It was just for a little while, but I felt alive again, and that was a gift I needed because it was starting to feel that I was going to feel like a corpse for all eternity.

Obviously I didn't completely forget about anything that happened but it was almost like it had happened to someone else and I had only heard about it.
But then my best friend showed up a few days later and with it she brought the reminder that I did have a history.
He did exist. And then he didn't.
My mind is burdened by that correlation.
And in the same way, when I crossed the state line back to Texas a week later I was immediately overwhelmed with the familiar feeling I thought I had left behind.
My grandparents home as well, which is filled with memories of family get togethers, holidays, my grandparents funny bickering, childhood, even wonderful Chantz memories, is now only filled the months after his death. I couldn't even go in the room where I slept my life away for weeks after his death for fear of just going back to that place. That home has been a refuge my whole life. One of the few constant things I've ever had, and now I'm scared of spending the night there. It literally makes me remember every little thing I did and thought a few months ago.
I forget I had an independent life in Fort Worth before him, and even during our relationship.
I'm angry with him for that.
But I'm mostly angry at myself for letting it happen because I'm sure he didn't intend for me to feel that way.
My apartment feels more like home than my real home, but I am thankful I am living somewhere else right now.
I'm working on changing that correlation, it's just harder than I thought it'd be.
I'm ready to stop going back to that place mentally and emotionally.
I have decided that after I graduate I am leaving the country for a while, or at least the state and go as far away as I can. Maybe I can start over. And maybe when I come back home it will be different and I will see everything in perspective. I think I just need time.
Everyone keeps saying that, and the whole world can't be wrong.
But right now, I want to forget him. And I want to bring him back at the same time. I want to accept this. I want to stay frozen and not have to move forward. I want to just be happy. I want to heal. I want to rejoice in the fact that I knew him and make him proud. But I also want to fade away and not have to deal with this circumstance.
I want too many conflicting things.
Will my feelings and thoughts eventually become consistent so I will know in which direction to go? Because I'm just on both sides right now and it's not getting me anywhere. I'm ready to change that.

-----
I met a woman in New Orleans who does caricatures and portraits for a living. My friend and I were her last customers one day and she was super chatty despite her twelve hour work day. She told us about her life, and how she came to do what she did. About her youth and education. She even talked about her father's death. Most people nowadays are so closed off, and to meet someone so wonderfully genuine really made my day better. And without her knowing my life at all, she said something that filled my heart's mind completely that I had to write it down on the spot. All I had was a pack of gum, but I didn't want to forget the exact words so it worked just fine.

"while my grief was legitimate, it need not destroy my life."

It was so simple, and maybe I've even heard it before but when she said it, it just clicked.

Someone else also said something to me a few weeks ago:

Sometimes you'll do stupid shit, sometimes you'll be self destructive (I recommend doing your best not to be, easier said than done, I know, but it's important to try not to fuck your own shit up just because the universe did it to you first), but it's all part of the process. Just keep going.

That in fact, is the best thing I've been told from someone who knows what it's like. I'm realizing slowly but surely that it is a part of the process to feel and do self destructive things, but there is a limit. And one day, I will start caring again, and I need to make sure to keep the rest of my life as intact as I can for when that day comes.
Last week was the first of many(hopefully) weeks to come where I smile because I feel a happiness in me. Because I feel a drive, and hope, and know that life, just like death, does in fact go on. I will feel that I can live a wonderful life without Chantz. I will be able to keep him in my heart for always and cherish every moment with him, as opposed to try to figure out a way to make him disappear. Because unfortunately, you can only do that in the movies, so I better "put my big girl panties on", as Chantz used to say, and accept that there are some things I will never be able to change, and that sometimes the only thing that I can change is my reaction to it.

Honestly, he would be kicking my butt right now. He would want me to move forward and be happy and stop crying about him. Knowing him, he would have done anything to save us from this grief. But really, my feeling of abandonment is so overwhelming and has been this whole time that I think it's beyond unfair for me to do what he would want when he did the one thing he promised me he'd never do two weeks prior. So suck it Chantz. At least for now.

I go back to this poem sometimes so I can be reminded that I eventually need to get to the end of this grief exactly like the end of this poem.

"Heavy"
by Mary Oliver

That time

I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying

I went closer,
and I did not die.
Surely God
had His hand in this,

as well as friends.
Still, I was bent,
and my laughter,
as the poet said,

was nowhere to be found.
Then said my friend Daniel
(brave even among lions),
"It's not the weight you carry

but how you carry it --
books, bricks, grief --
it's all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it

when you cannot, and would not,
put it down."
So I went practicing.
Have you noticed?

Have you heard
the laughter
that comes, now and again,
out of my startled mouth?

How I linger
to admire, admire, admire
the things of this world
that are kind, and maybe
also troubled --

roses in the wind,
the sea geese on the steep waves,
a love
to which there is no reply?

I love you.

Today I feel crazy. All over again.

I'm a wreck most days. I've just gotten better about hiding it and keeping it to myself.

I've been keeping up with the blog of a girl my age who lost her boyfriend as well, but this was two years ago and it was an accident. From the beginning, she was set on healing, and she had accepted his death. I've also heard from  and talked to other people who've grieved. And I realize that I fail miserably at grieving. I know there's "no wrong way to grieve," (I'm so sick of that phrase) but there's definitely a destructive way to grieve. I definitely win on that one. I'm not the only one that lost Chantz, but as I look around those who were closest to him why does it feel like I was the only one that stayed behind? I've become listless. Lifeless. And this girl, whose blog I read..she decided to live life to its fullest in her boyfriend's memory. I don't see how she could from the start. It does make a difference how a death happened. If Chantz's had been an accident I believe it would've been different. But there's no way to really know is there?

The night before Valentine's Day it hit me for the first time that Chantz was never coming back. I thought this whole time there would be an end to him being dead. It's surreal how we all cope. We create universes that make sense in our heads in order for us to deal with what we cannot comprehend. My lack of comprehension lies with Chantz no longer existing. And to be honest, I still find myself fighting it every day. I have this one thing to hold on to, and as long as it's there, there's hope that eventually he'll come back. I find myself clinging on to this  thought every day: that the only reason I've been pushed out of everything associated with his life, haven't been able to see his room, or his things, or even go to his old house where we used to spend so much time in, is because he's there and they don't want me to see him. I keep telling myself that if I only get to see his room, and the emptiness of it that's supposedly been there for the last seven months, then maybe I will accept that he's really gone. But is that something I even want to accept?..No

I found him, I saw him. Why can't I accept that it was really him? The doctors came into the room and told us that night that he didn't make it...I stayed there for hours after his parents left. Why do I rationalize every little detail of that night and make myself believe that it was all a set up? Maybe it's because I didn't see his body in the morgue, resting. But except for his brother and parents, no one else did either. I don't even understand how others have accepted his death when most hadn't even seen him in a while. I saw him that night, alive and after. And I still can't grasp it. The crazy workings of my mind trying to fix this. This scenario seems highly plausible in my head, with conspiracy theories intertwined in my likely story. Just like the movies of course. Damn you movies. But there's no way that I would be allowed to walk around half dead for so long if this was just all a lie, right? I don't see how you would wish that on your worst enemy let alone watch them go through it.
Like I said, today I feel crazy all over again.

I think about death more than I do about life. It's honestly a waste of life in my opinion. And I disgust myself (not enough to stop though) when I think about people in the world who are wishing with every fiber of their beings for life. And I, the girl who's more privileged than most, just because of the country I live in, spend my life on death.

I feel that Chantz opened up my eyes to the meaningless of it all. And I'm not trying to be sour here. It's just how it all seems to me.
Pointless.
I think about disappearing often. Just poof, gone, what a rest that would be. Since reality sank in, or at least started to, I died more inside. I'm not trying to be melodramatic here, I  just don't know how else to put it. Nowadays I feel empty; it's getting hard to even feel Chantz's absence. Being devoid of emotion is like not existing already. The only difference is that you're aware of it every second. How unfair that we have to be aware of this while those who are gone, aren't even aware of their absence.

The worst part of grief? Is that you can't control it. Every couple of days things take a turn for the unexpected. Today, insanity, as I like to call it. My make-believe world where Chantz's death is a huge and elaborate lie.
I'm leaving town in a few days, I hope that I can smile and sincerely be filled with something genuine, even if it's just for a little bit. Because utter emptiness is worse than pain. What's the point of being alive if the only reason you're here is because your heart's beating? I ask that same question every day.


(Grief can look like a lot of things not resembling sharp sorrow.)

This picture is one of my most favorite pictures of Chantz and I. For his first birthday together I gave him a picture frame with this picture in it. On the back of it I wrote that I loved him very much. I don't really remember the exact words. A few months into my first year of college he gave me the same picture and I framed it. He knew how much I loved it. 

...

A few weeks after he died I went to my apartment to gather some stuff to take back home and I saw that picture frame sitting on a shelf. I had completelty forgotten that he had written on the back of it, but I wanted to take the picture with me so I took it out of the frame. On the back it said:

 "I will always be with you, through everything.

I love you, Chantz."

I screamed, I cried, I felt so abandoned. I wanted it to be like one of those movie scenes where the person left behind got a loving message from the beyond telling them that they would always be there. But it just felt like a lie. I screamed at him for not living up to that message. I was heartbroken that he completely forgot he even wrote that.

I carried that picture around for months, but now it's back in its frame, and sometimes I still take it out and read what he wrote. It still makes me feel the same way, but sometimes it does bring me comfort. I know he didn't live up to it. But he did love me, and he was always there while he was alive. I know he wanted to be for the rest of his life but I just wish I could understand why it isn't that way all.

Reading an 'I love you' from him is one of the best things I've had to hang on to this whole time.

I really miss you today.

I also met the beautiful baby of a wonderful married couple today. I remember when I heard about the pregnancy, such exciting news. Chantz was still here too and I remember sharing the news with him. I also remember that after he passed I thought about the time when the baby would come; it would mean Chantz would be long gone. (It's weird how I correlated everything with him, even things that were completely separate from him). I couldn't even picture myself exisiting so many months down the road. I was more than positive that I was going to go after him. But here I am. And here she is. She is a beautiful baby, and I can only hope that one day I feel that I have these wonderful things to look forward to as well.

Welcome to the world baby Claire. You are so loved by many.

7 months

Today marks 7 months since Chantz took his own life.
Every 6th I fall apart even more so than I do every day.
It's like it's happening all over again
That night, the garage, the hospital.
Every detail is forever ingrained in my memory.
It brings back those questions I thought I put to rest.
I have been trying to be better. To heal.
To move forward.
But this day always sets me back and I haven't taken many steps forward to begin with.
I am so exceptionally tired.
He's still every where I look and now I can go a few mintues at a time without thinking about him. But then it comes back and I'm surprised that I could even think about something else in the first place.
I'm constantly scared of going backwards.
I'm constantly scared that someone else will disappear.
I'm in constant fear that I will never come back. I dont know who I've become, and if I'm getting better.
I'm told that I'm strong by so many. But that's far from the truth.
I am forever wrecked.
What does being strong have to do with any of it anyway?
Whether I stay in bed all day, do something productive, drink myself to sleep or anything else..he's still gone. That never changes.

It never will.

In a dream I meet
my dead friend. He has,
I know, gone long and far,
and yet he is the same,
for the dead are changeless.
They grow no older.
It is I that have changed,
grown strange to what I was.
Yet I, the changed one,
ask: "How you been?"
He grins and looks at me.
"I been eating peaches
off some mighty fine trees."
-Wendell Berry