i can't sleep

I can’t sleep.

I’m lucky that this doesn’t happen often. Usually my prescribed sleep aid is enough. Under duress, a quick hit of weed. But sometimes, nothing works and I’m still awake to see a new day starting.

I think it’s mostly stress. I’ve signed the purchase and sale agreement on the house. The appraisal is tomorrow. We close in 25 days. I still need to pack, hire movers, figure out where I’m storing all my stuff indefinitely until I’m ready to buy a house. Replace a few smoke detectors. All from 3 hours away, alone, with two kids under 5. I’m so glad I have my family to help and support me, but it’s a lot.

I sat outside and stared at the sky for a while. The moon and stars are so much brighter here. I look out at the expanse of lawn and the mountains and the constellations, and think about how strange it is to be living my dream life at the expense of my husband.

It’s not guilt, per se, though there is some of that floating around inside of me. It’s not that I feel guilty for living a good life after Pete; I know my husband and I know that all he ever wanted was for the kids and me to be happy. Wherever he is, he is beaming over how well we are doing, over how much of him we have absorbed. Maybe he even has a hand in it. But I do think about what it looks like to others. I wonder if they see us starting over, thriving, happy, and wonder if I’ve gotten over him too quickly or that I’m glad he’s gone. That couldn’t be further from the truth. There is a gaping, Pete-sized void in my heart and it burns like it’s been cauterized. It will heal eventually, but it will always be disfigured and parts of it are irreparable. 

I dreamed of coming back to Vermont. In my heart, I never wanted to raise kids in the Massachusetts suburbs. I wanted them to play on my grandparents’ tire swing, splash in the mountain springs, for them to be surrounded by open fields and shaded woods. I wanted to give them what I had, and suddenly I am able to. Pete and I often daydreamed about living in some sort of tiny cabin in the woods, and here I am typing this while living in one.

We were always struggling financially. Though we were both working full-time and budgeted the best we could, we could never get ahead and were living paycheck to paycheck. We didn’t have any disposable income for vacations or date nights or many splurges. It was often stressful, but, cheesily enough, we always said that as long as we had each other, we would always make it work. We accumulated quite a bit of credit card debt just trying to keep our heads above water.

 Now, I’m about to sell our house and be able to pay off all our debt and still have enough leftover for a decent down payment on our next house. Though the social security money I get for the boys won’t replace Pete’s income, when coupled with my paycheck and all the money I’m saving from living here, we are going to end up just fine financially. We won’t be loaded, but we’ll be comfortable and hopefully able to buy a nice, modest home where I can raise the boys.

Things are looking up for us, but we started from the absolute rock bottom. I still see the day Pete died every time I close my eyes. The trauma is still palpable. But there’s so much for us to be grateful for that luckily it’s usually not too hard to keep that in the forefront of my thoughts. But then there are these random nights where I’m too sad and anxious to sleep. I find myself crying, and can’t tell if the accompanying heartache is from what used to be or what should have been. Probably both.