Another Halloween Gone

Well, I was actually going to finally try and get back into Halloween a little this year. For so many years, it was wrapped up in traditions with our friend Rand, from carving pumpkins to decorating his house, to dressing up and handing out candy to the trick-or-treaters from his house. When he passed away in March 2010, all that just came crashing down and I found myself really lost about what to do now.

Halloween 2010, I cried and cried. We bought candy and I thought I’d try to give it out here at the apartment. Total failure. Not a single kid in the entire complex. That just hurt because I was trying to get into the spirit and just not a single kid.

Halloween 2011, I was recovering from my hysterectomy. I was in no position to decorate the apartment let alone try and go somewhere or do something. So I wound up having to pretty much miss it entirely.

This year, I finally carved my first pumpkins again. I decorated the apartment. And I planned on heading up to my Mom’s to help hand out candy at her house. She gets into it and has a lot of kids in her neighborhood. I got up, got ready, did my makeup and waited for Love to come home. We were going to eat really quick and then go up. I had a witchy outfit set out and everything. But Love came home with a bad migraine attack. He’d been dealing with it for much of the day and by the time he got home, it was bad.

So I had to call it off literally at the last minute. I called Mom like 6:15pm to tell her we couldn’t make it. I was utterly heartbroken.

I know it’s not Love’s fault and I know he hates that these attacks have disrupted our plans and lives for almost two years now. But it still hurt. Deeply. I took a shower last night and just sobbed. I couldn’t help it. It was just everything all rolled into one; grief, loss, sadness about this being the third year in a row I’ve missed out on my absolute favorite day of the year.

For me, Halloween is like Christmas to most people. I’ve ALWAYS loved Halloween so much. I used to decorate the outside of my house when I was a kid, stuffing clothing with crumpled newspaper to make a scarecrow figure, carving and painting headstones, putting up webbing across the door, stuffing surgical gloves with sand and planting them so they looked like they were digging up out of the ground. I have just always gotten into it. So it was just something I so enjoyed about the yearly Halloween traditions with Rand because he got into it too.

Love is all about Christmas. He’s never really been much into Halloween. He would play along and join in on the pumpkin carving and such, but it’s not a big deal to him if we don’t do anything. It’s just another day to him. But to me, it’s become like this huge massive symbolic reminder of my friend being dead and gone. So it’s been so important to me to try and get past that and make NEW traditions.

Not going to Mom’s yesterday just crushed me. I’m fighting back tears just typing this out. I don’t even know if I’m making sense or explaining why it’s affecting me so strongly. But it’s like ONE FUCKING DAY A YEAR and if I miss it, I have to carry around that entire year’s weight of grief again before I can get another chance. It meant so much to me to do this and now the chance is gone again.

I was supposed to go up and help Mom today. She’s moving Nanny (again) to a new place as the last new place from last month didn’t work out. But I just couldn’t sleep last night. I was up until like 3am, just too sad and upset to relax. I just kept breaking down crying. Which then, all the stress and crying lead to me waking up with an upset stomach. And I’ve just been so sick to my stomach all day today. I wound up having to cancel on my Mom because I just was too sick.

All over stupid trick or treating, I know. But it’s just so much more than that.

And I can’t even talk to Love about how upset I still am and how badly that hurt because he’ll just take it as an attack. He’ll get defensive because he won’t understand that I understand it’s not his fault, but that doesn’t change the fact it still hurts.

I wound up taking down and packing up every single Halloween decoration last night too. I just couldn’t stand to look at it. And now the apartment looks empty and bare and it’s making me feel even more bad and even more in mourning. So I’m just fucked up right now and I don’t know what to do about any of it.

Some dark and angry little part of me wants to tell Love we’re not doing Christmas this year just so he can feel what it’s like to keep missing out on something that’s important to him, but I know that’s just stupid and petty. But I feel like he doesn’t truly get how much this bothers me and how badly this affected me.

Anyway, that’s me. In serious grief and crying like a damned fool again and not knowing what the hell to do any more and having absolutely no clue how to deal with the prospect of waiting an entire year to try all over again.

Tags: crying, depression, grief, halloween, migraines, missed halloween