I started the creative writing course I signed up for on Monday night. I'm not sure it's such a good idea. One of the exercises we have to do is sit in front of a computer or a notebook and free write for five minutes then slowly increase it to half an hour. We're supposed to write whatever thoughts come into our head. I've been doing this for the past couple of nights and it's been very painful. When I write in my blog, I control what I'm writing but when I do this free writing it's all thoughts of Ron and how much I miss him, how my heart is breaking and how much my life has been changed.
For the most part, I seem to be doing OK. But I don't know if I really am or not. When I slow down and just sit, I feel the void so deeply. And I hurt so much.
One of my 'quirks' if you will, is opening mail. For some reason I just don't like opening it. Cards are OK - I can tell what they are by the size of the envelope. And boxes are always fun to open. But bills and anything official, I'd just as soon not open. You wouldn't believe the stack of mail I haven't bothered opening. In my more rational moments, it's rather frightening. Ron knew this about me and asked Ryan to kind of take over a lot of those things. But I can't really tell my 26 year old son that I have this "thing" about not wanting to open mail so now I have to do it myself.
One of the things Ron did was take care of all the bills - because I wouldn't open them. I got a bill in the mail today and when I opened it, it was the fourth overdue notice on something I had no idea what it was. Ron went over a lot of the bills with me and showed me how he paid them on-line, but this was one I had never seen before and I had no idea what it was. Thankfully there was a phone number on it, so I called to see who they were and what the bill was for and to explain why it hadn't been paid. It turned out that it was the company that we rent the hot water heater from and the bill had been outstanding since June. Luckily it wasn't for very much at all and the woman on the phone was very understanding when I explained things to her. She even helped me set it up to pay online. See - I had to do that all over again because Ron and I dealt with different banks.
There was another piece of mail that was addressed to Ron that came a couple of days ago. I finally opened it today. When I did, I just kind of shook my head. It was from the bank that he dealt with for years - that I've been dealing with since he died - and they know that, informing him that he qualified for a Visa Platinum Gold card. Yea, I thought it was kind of funny in a bizare, dark humour kind of way. I think Ron would have been amused too.
But between that and the memories that are coming out with the writing, it's bringing home again what losing Ron really means.
So once again it's staying up late at night because I can't get to sleep.
I don't know if I can keep up with the writing course or not. I guess I'll just have to see.