Break, Break, Break

It’s been almost 3 days since Tom died.
I still don’t know how I feel. I wore myself out with crying on Wednesday afternoon, but I haven’t really broken down since. My phone goes virtually nonstop, but the more people I speak to the more unreal it feels. Like we’re talking about a book we read for a lecture, or a celebrity we never knew.

I genuinely feel I wouldn’t be surprised to open my inbox to find an email from him, or receive a text. It just hasn’t clicked yet. I think that’s helped by the 300-odd mile distance between me and the rest of my uni friends - when we’re all together for the funeral that will change. How different to last week’s reunion…

I’m going to start running. I feel at the moment all I’m doing is hiding, and pretending. I expected the kids at school to drive me mad, not keep me sane. But they are doing. When I get to school at 8 o’clock and know that I will be standing in front of around 120 kids that day, talking about fairytales or politicians’ speeches, it focuses me and makes me block out everything else. At the end of every hour I’m amazed that I’m not crying and that the kids - my kids =o) - don’t even think anything has changed since last lesson. It’s a wonderful tonic but I’m sure it’s just temporary. Everything has changed. The more you shut things out the harder they’ll break through.

I don’t think words are capable of describing emotion, really. They can’t quite capture bliss, or grief - because as soon as you write it down it becomes confined to marks on a page. And overwhelming emotion is too powerful for that. How can you represent something which is consuming you with a line on a piece of paper?

So I’m going to start running. Tom ran, cycled, swam - thought nothing of a 4 hour cycle ride out for lunch, then 4 hours back. Ran miles before breakfast. I can’t even run out of the apartment to my car in the rain without feeling tired.

By running I want to tell Tom that I miss him, and have always admired him, and I’m sorry I never texted him back on Saturday when he asked how the reunion was going. I’m going to sign myself up for a 10k run in March - start small! - and ask Tom’s parents in a few weeks whether any charities have particularly helped them. If not I’ll raise money for Cancer Research.
Tom would laugh at me for thinking 10k is a big deal - but I know he’d be pleased too. I can picture the way his eyebrows would raise slightly with his wide smile, and can hear the laughing tone in his voice -"yeah? You’re really gonna run that?"

Well... in a fashion. It might be more staggering and panting than actual running, but I'll have a go.

[ You act as though we will be together for ever. You act as though there is infinite pleasure and time without end. How can I know that? My experience has been that time always ends. In theory you are right, the quantum physicists are right, the romantics and the religious are right. Time without end. In practice we both wear a watch. If I rush at this relationship it's because I fear for it. I fear you have a door I cannot see and that any minute now the door will open and you'll be gone. Then what? Then what as I bang the walls like the Inquisition searching for a saint? Where will I find the secret passage? For me it'll just be the same four walls.
—Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body ]