And now.

I have to start writing again.  

I have to begin to make some sense of all of this.  I have to start somewhere again.  I’m not sure how to do it.

It is strange to be alone.  I miss Michael, and I don’t.  I don’t miss the craziness and the anger and the sadness and the pain.  But I do miss my friend, so much.  I miss having someone to share the day with, someone to laugh when Cedric grabbed my silk yarn and ran desperately out the door, and I had to race after him and untangle it from around the rose bush.  And then he did it again!  I miss having someone to tell that I’m annoyed and worried that the yarn that I need to finish the last sleeve of my sweater is backordered, and that I don’t know what to do about the ceiling in the pink room, and should I take a plane or drive to Maryland?

I hope that he’s found peace. 

I wish that I could shake the worrying about how it was for him to die alone.  Alone and angry with me, probably.  Or not.  I run that around and around and around in my head.  How much did he understand, how much was the delusions he spun in his head every night as he lay by himself, twisting everything around?  And might there have been a moment of clarity, a moment when he saw the truths?

I will never know.

And somehow I have to put my life together from the wreckage of all this time.

I have to put myself back together.  Stop spending money, stop using the reconstruction of this house as a diversion, just stop.  Pay the bills, get things sorted out, start working again.  Finish my classes.  Get through the semester, and start putting my health back together.  Get ready for the conference. 

Learn to be me again, really alone, for the first time in a lifetime.

I’m not afraid.  But I am so, so, so sad.