I'm a rocket ship on my way to Mars on a collision course, I am a satellite, I'm out of control

Today is six months. That feels significant, but I can’t decide in what way. I can’t believe it’s already been six months, and I also can’t believe it’s only been six months. When I’m alone, which is a lot of the time, I feel a whole mess of emotions: sadness, anger, frustration, relief, despair. Sometimes, if I’m lucky, I just feel nothing at all. There’ve also been, typically when I’m with other people, moments of real happiness and joy in there. It’s complicated. Everything, always, is complicated.

(Also I broke my ankle last week? That’s not helping.)

I’ve spent the past six months trying to figure out what to do with my life. I know that I have to move forward, and in some ways I’ve done that. I’ve developed new routines, made new friends and deepened relationships with existing ones, picked up new hobbies and returned to old ones. I’ve tried to remember how I lived on my own before. It hasn’t always been pretty - I’d go so far as to say most of the time it’s been pretty ugly, but that’s just because my face is there, zing - but I’m getting by.

At the same time, though, I don’t want to move forward, and in a lot of ways I just won’t allow myself to. I know that Jennie will always be a part of my life, no matter what I do, and I wouldn’t want it any other way. How do I figure out how to live with that while also making my own path, exploring new things and new places and new relationships. How do I reconcile the competing thoughts and feelings in my head? I’m pretty sure I’m going to be working on figuring that out for a long, long time. It’s only been six months, and I’m trying to be patient with myself. It’s hard, though, when you feel like crap and you don’t want to anymore and the only thing really standing in the way of that is your own brain (see previous note re: things being complicated).

There’s one thing I do know for certain, six months out from the worst day of my life. Whatever I end up doing, wherever I end up doing it and whoever I end up doing it with (phrasing), I want Jennie to be proud of me. I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying to live up to the man she believed I am. As I’ve told a number of her friends, Jennie had impeccable taste in people, and I’m going to do the best I can to prove her right.

I also hope that if she’s a ghost or a spirit or whatever she’s not just hanging out here watching me work or watch TV or go to the bathroom or cry, because that sounds really boring. I hope that, untethered from these uncomfortable meatsacks we call bodies, she’s seeing the whole world, spotting every bird that ever has or will exist, petting all the good doggos she meets, and shooting off into space to explore other planets and galaxies. Maybe she pops back in every now and then to check on us. My hope is that, when she does, she likes what she sees.