A Before and After picture

I really haven’t seen many people since Jack died.  In two months, with the exception of family on a rare occasion, I had seen only one friend, my best friend Jen from graduate school and her husband, Andrew.  She is, honest to God the kind of friend you imagine yourself having as a grown up.  She’s like a warm blanket that you want to wrap yourself up in when you’re not feeling so great and still display over the back of your favorite couch or chair when you are, because she’s just that beautiful and inviting. The point I’m trying to make is, during a time when I felt the most unpredictable, and like I could barely hold it together, she was safe to me.  Protective even.  Other than that, I’d been shutting the world out. 

Jen and me last year at her bachelorette weekend on Martha's Vineyard

It’s tough.  It’s like I’m a different person.  It is pointless to try and ignore that going through this has highlighted that there is a Tricia before Jack died and a Tricia after.  Sometimes I look in the mirror and I hardly recognize the girl looking back at me.  Or I see a recent-enough “before” photo of me and it seems a lifetime ago.  A constant worry I battle is whether or not the people who knew and liked me (the two things are separate, trust me) "before" will still want to be around the “after”.

A little over a week ago I dipped my feet back into the socialization pool.  I've been petrified.  Going into it you’d think I never knew how to swim at all.  I made sure the water was warm and that I had something to keep my afloat just in case I got tired.  Okay, I’ll stop with the metaphors (sometimes I just cant help myself!).  And so, when a good friend I work with texted and asked when I’d be up for a visit, I took advantage of the fact I was in an okay place that day and told her to come that Saturday.  Instantly, I’d regretted it.  I thought about cancelling right up until she texted that she was on her way over, had I eaten lunch yet?  Sean kept saying it would be good for me to see her and that he’d be there too just in case I needed him.  She arrived and the moment she walked through the door and gave me a big, long hug, I was a mess.  We sat and talked for hours.  Not just about Jack but about work, traveling and, just for fun, some shallow obnoxious things.  We laughed; God, did we laugh. 

It was so good to see her and pretend, just for a bit, that nothing had changed; that I’d been able to go through this and remain the same, albeit a little sadder. But if I’m being honest, and that is what I am trying to make sure I do here, it’s that I was so exhausted when she left.  It was exhausting trying to be “before” Tricia.  To be able to focus on a conversation and laugh at the right times and respond at the right times was exhausting.  Texting with someone is easy.  The rules are different.  You don’t have to worry about how you look, or if you’re crying or in a bitchy mood, and if something said bothers you or you don’t want to answer you can just give a quick one word response or an “LOL” then just shut the text app down and walk away from your phone.  Face to face is not so easy.  There are a few more nuances to an exchange than that.  So choosing whom I could see first was hard.  I love my friends, really I do and every single one of them for different reasons.  But I knew I had to be careful who I let in first because of how fragile I am these days.  Jessalyn is brutally honest and makes me laugh yet is one of the kindest and most gentle people I know.  I knew she would place no expectations on me.  That I could be a mess and it wouldn’t make her uncomfortable.  She can sit in silence and not have to try to fill it with something she hopes would make you feel better, which is what I need lately.

Two of my closest girlfriends are having babies.  Actually, one already did, a beautiful little girl.  The other is expecting a baby boy any day, we shared the same due date, April 2^nd.  I love both of these girls.  Normally, they would be 2 of the people I would want around while feeling like this but it's just so complicated now.   The symmetry of our lives was so exciting “before” and so now that our paths diverged it’s excruciating.  I know in my heart, with some time, I will be able to make it to a place where I can watch them with their children and how they grow up and change but for now, I stay away.  In part because I don’t want to dampen such a happy time in their lives, for them to have to see what losing your baby looks like, and in part because, for me, it just hurts too damn bad and I try to protect what's left of my heart.

I miss my friends.  Some of them I miss so badly I worry that when I find my way to a comfortable “after” that I will have lost them too.  At a time when the thought of losing anyone else I love is unbearable, the idea that our friendships could die as well terrifies me.  What if a broken heart is not the only casualty of an already awful loss?  But the truth is, I'm still not there yet.  I’m still not in a place where I am able to straddle the before and after world I have to live in.  So when people ask me to let them know if there is anything they can do for me, I wish I had the courage to verbalize what I could use:  Patience.  Please be patient with me and my broken heart.  This didn’t come with a rulebook or an expiration date.  I wish I had a date for you when the hurt was going to fade away and the “before” Tricia will be back.  But the truth is, I don’t think she will.  I think I will get better at being the new me, the “after” me, and hopefully that will be enough.  So to my friends that may wonder if I think of you or if I realize you’re still there me: Always.  I do.   And thank you.