Monday was the one month anniversary of the fire. It feels strange thinking about it; a lot has happened because it's a month in 2025 so of course a lot has happened, but everything still feels stopped at the same time. I still haven't managed to go a twelve hour period without crying. I still see Madelaine in so many things; it hurts, but I also hope I never stop seeing her everywhere? The idea of moving forward or moving on still fills me with dread. I hate the idea of living a long life.
The holiday season is coming up, which means a month of 14-16 hour days and 6 days a week in the box mines. I'm simultaneously looking forward to the lack of time to think about things and dreading the holidays themselves. It had become a tradition at this point to do a giant slow cooker pot of mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving. I got to help Madelaine by doing a some of the more menial tasks (peeling potatoes, grating cheese, dishes, etc) so she could focus on the cooking portions. I miss offering support for the things she enjoyed; usually I would try to focus on related tasks you didn't enjoy so you could focus on what you did enjoy about what you were doing.
I have a new apartment set up for just after the new year which I think is nice. It'll be a fourth floor walk up so at least I'll be getting my steps in. It's a nice space as far as apartments go, but I still don't want to think about a living space without Madelaine included. I keep looking back at the lead ups to us moving in together and how excited we were to be sharing our space. I want to go back to that, please?
I'm trying to keep going forward, and I'm taking the first baby steps even if I'm not happy about it. I keep wishing I could just have our life together back. I miss Madelaine. I miss Merlin and Morgan. I miss my life? I don't want to have to consider who I am now in this worse version of the world that existed a month ago. I know I'm going to have to, but at least I have the next month to be a box mine robot to dissociate through before I have to get there.