Thoughts on Conflicting Emotions

You may or may not be aware of the fact that Jonathan means gift of God. I told a friend this because she often looks sad when I talk about Jonathan. My friend is a person of faith and I explained that I wanted her to know the meaning of Jonathan's name so that she would feel the same joy in his memory as I do. She in turn explained to me that she sometimes looks sad because she is thankful to have me in her life but she is aware that I am only in her life because he is not and I think she worries that I would misunderstand and be upset by this. If she was worried she needn't have been, I understand that conflict. Of course she is not glad that Jonathan died and she hates that I have had to lose something and someone so precious to me yet is that loss which eventually brought me in to her life, a fact she is thankful for. Though the circumstances are related the feelings about them are completely separate.

In the last three years I have become more than I imagined I could be. I can honestly say I am living my life. I have spent the last year living in the moment for the moment. It hasn’t always been easy and there are consequences to not considering the future, such as having to use the emergency credit card to pay for food and accommodation whist looking for the next job. It’s not a way of life that I would recommend but it was something I had to do. For a long time I couldn’t imagine a future without Jonathan in it. I quite simply did not know how to live without him. In the two years after his death I learned to survive. In the last year I have learned to live. Maybe next year I will at least learn to plan far enough ahead to save me from using the credit card but let us not get ahead of ourselves. For me living means being happy. Living means loving. Living means being willing to look beyond what I need to finding things I want. Living is scary.

In the last year I have been happy yet in those moments of happiness there is sadness. I have made new friends and love them yet I still shy away from dating and any romantic entanglements that might entail. Most importantly I have learned what I want from this new life. I want to travel. I want to explore. I want to meet new and different people and learn how they see the world and why. I like my new life. I love my new friends. I get excited to think of the possibilities of who and what I might discover if I can pull off this travelling lark. But. I still miss Jonathan. I want to know what he thinks about my new friends. I want him to meet and like them. I want to hear his voice and see his smile. I long to hear him tell me he loves me. I even wish I could see that look on his face that tells me he thinks I’m crazy because even then I could see how much he loved me.

You might think writing this would make me cry but it doesn’t. It makes me sad. I still say that Jonathan dying was and remains unacceptable. However I have come to accept that this is my life now.  I accept that I cannot change the past and only I can create my future. I understand that a person can be happy and sad at the same time and that the sadness does not cancel out the happiness; in fact I think it makes it more meaningful because the sadness reminds me how important the happiness is. When I was happy before I did not appreciate how precious it was.  The sadness reminds me. When I love now I love more openly in case the person I love isn’t there the next time I look for them. When a bad thing happens I ask myself “Is anybody dead? Has the world ended?”  and most times the answer is no and the problem is put in perspective. I have my bad days and my down days but now it’s just one of those days that everybody gets. The sad days aren’t the norm. I’ll never be a happy smiley person but I hope that I am no longer a cloud of misery. I hope when someone sees me they see a person at peace with herself and the world as it is. I hope they no longer see a person full of grief but see me, just me.