both of these things can be true

I’ve always experienced an extreme lull of depression just before my life is about to surge into something great. It’s like the ying to the Yang. The darkness before the light. Etc etc etc. 

I’m about to get everything I’ve ever wanted; everything WE wanted and he’s… not here. It’s hard to fathom that. The feelings are complex and confusing.  

I’m about to buy our dream house. A little log cabin in the woods. We’ll all have our own bedrooms. We’ll have a workshop space, room for all our art supplies, room for the boys to play, wood stoves to keep us warm through winter, a perfect massage space, tons of closets and a pantry… our own tub and washer/dryer, finally… we’ve survived 8 months crammed into this studio apartment and it feels so good to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

This house feels like it’s just as much mine as it is Pete’s. We wouldn’t have any of this if it weren’t for him and what happened to him.

Some days it feels like he somehow sacrificed himself so the boys and I could live a life I only dreamed about and never thought I’d have. For years, all I wanted was to come home to Vermont and get the hell out of the Massachusetts suburbs. I think Pete sometimes took it for dissatisfaction for my life as it was, but it was more like a calling. It felt so completely off and wrong for me to be raising kids in an environment so different from what I had growing up. My childhood wasn’t perfect by a long shot, but being raised in the rural green mountains is something magical to me. It’s special and somewhat sacred. I enjoyed my Boston life, and I enjoyed my suburban life. But I LONGED for my Vermont life. Pete was never opposed; we had similar dreams to go raise kids in a log cabin in the woods. But we had no idea how to go about it or whether w'e’d ever achieve it. But it always felt good to talk and dream about it. 

And now here it is, laying at my feet. And it cost me my best friend and life partner. How fucked is that. 

This Taylor swift lyric keeps echoing in my head:

There’ll be happiness after you - But there was happiness because of you - Both of these things can be true