My "Year of Hell"!

This is the only way I can call last year. And although I would like it to end the same way as in the Star Trek: Voyager episode, I know it won't.
I will not have my life back.

There is a song (among many) that accompanied me during last year, and at one point it says "You only know you've been high when you're feeling low". I knew I was living a great life, I knew I was high and happy, but even if I knew back then, now I understand how high and great was that life.

Not a day passed, since Alberto's death, that I have not cried. Sometime it lasts a few seconds, sometimes hours. I learned how to suppress my urge to cry when I'm in public, either with calming pills or perfectly timing a strategic retreat to a bathroom or a hidden corner. I learned how people feel distressed looking at my shining eyes, and I know now how to hide my pain.

I also learned, in these many months, how to put up my best smiling face when I go around town, so that people can actually see that I'm alive, and I can endure and go on. That I can still be trusted, and indeed I can manage to do my job (if I had one!). No matter what turmoil I may have in my heart, my rational mind is still here and working. Without the same enthusiasm and joy-de-vivre (and many times without the same clarity) I had, but I can be in charge, actually capable of taking decisions, although not as proficient as Alberto was. And my fake smile is reassuring those who cannot understand the difference between my rationality and my emotions.

Actually I also learned that I can forget that I'm sad and maimed. When I write an article for the STIC magazine, or when I'm deciding which layout to use for it, I truly forget Alberto is not at my side. When I search for the pictures to accompany the articles, or when I'm looking for the right clip to put in the introductory video presentation for conventions, I truly feel I'm doing this while Alberto is sleeping in the other room.
And I can truly enjoy those moments when I'm joking with friends, on those rare occasions I can go out at the pub, or when I make a fool of myself on the stage at a convention, or while setting up all the tech devices needed in our control room.
Except, when everything is done, when the layout is finished, the panel at a convention is ended, when the applause starts or I am sending the magazine out to be printed... in those very moments a huge wave of sadness returns and plunge me into an abyss of despair and loneliness. That's when I retreat into a bathroom, or go on my bed and grab a pillow.

Those were the moments when Alberto and I looked at each other and enjoyed the moment,  no words needed, we knew we had done a good job or we just lived a joyful moment, or shared some emotions! No other set of eyes will ever replace his. Ever. To paraphrase another song that accompanied me during last year "I didn't need perfection to have the perfect day, I just wanted to see him happy, a smile on his face. Nothing else mattered 'cos he was everything to me".
Those days are gone, in a snap of a finger. I know it, and I accept it. But my emotional mind simply refuses it, and an absolute void opens up and engulfs me when my rational mind lose control.

I learned to cohabit with these two sides of me. The rational "me" knows that I have no alternative but to go on and face the huge wars I have to wage in order to just stay alive. Alberto's death was just a tiny tip of a enormous iceberg of betrayals and troubles. It will take decades to see the light at the end of the tunnel... if ever, and when it'll happen the things I hold most dear - Alberto's collections and possessions - will be away for good, either in the careful custody of friends or in some pawn shop. Memories will still be in my head and in my heart, as long as I'm alive and that's the only reason I'll struggle to stay alive.

The inner "me" is broken though, and it will never be whole again. Ever again I will be the Gabriella that I was before, because that Gabriella was part of something bigger, some sort of "super-being" made of two bodies, four legs, four arms, two noses, four eyes and two minds! That Gabriella is no more. And this Gabriella will always cry, everyday, forever.
There is nothing no one can do to bring back that whole being. I knew this from day one, from the very moment I laid beside Alberto's dead body, my head on his still chest, waiting for the dawn and the moment when I’d start to tell everybody what happened. That was the moment when I realised nothing will be mended again. My life has ended.

I am not the unbreakable rock everybody thinks I am, despite still being here - I'm wearing thinner and thinner. Because the nightmare that started with Alberto's death has not ended due to the huge iceberg of troubles I mentioned. That iceberg is crushing me down, bit by bit, until only dust will remain. It could take five months, five years or five decades. But the process has started. I'm crumbling down. There is nothing I can do to change what's been done.

I know it, and I am at peace with it. Don't cry for me, because, you see, when I will be reduced to dust, that'll be the moment when we will be whole again.

Oh, and if you think I'm writing this in the here and now because this is my dreadful anniversary... think again. I wrote these words many months ago. I just waited for the "right" moment for you to accept them! I hope you do.