Life always goes on in All Good Things

It does. I just haven’t been able to write about it recently. I’m on Instagram, though: leashipp, if you want to see what I’ve been doing. These days I find it a lot easier to communicate through images. Words....well, my fingers only want to write about one thing and I can’t let them. It’s been like this since April and got so much worse now and I can’t let myself write about him at all.

What do you do when you fall in love with someone completely, without even realising it until it’s far too late? Although I’ve had a lot of affairs and stuff, I’ve only actually been in love twice in my entire adult life. And now a third time, and it’s shocking. I forgot what it was like.

But I refuse to write about that.

I can write about Jon. He’s still dead. Still gone. We’re still without him. I still can’t bear it. I met up with everyone again for the first time since the day he died. I spent the last two weeks with them and it’s been much harder and more painful than I’d expected. His girlfriend just sobbed in my arms and I sobbed in hers and it was impossible to talk. Seeing Chris was the hardest, though. I didn’t realise how intertwined he and Jon were for me. They always shared the same roles, and then his are the arms that comforted me through the first shock of Jon’s death and every time I look at him I’m transported back to that summer evening twelve weeks ago when the world shattered.

Lots of wonderful things have happened. Well, no, not really. No, they have. Sort of. Some, at any rate.

I fell in love with a new part of the world: the south coast of my own country, the Jurassic coast from Lyme Regis across to Chesil Beach. Jenny comes from there and I stayed on her apple farm with her for a while and we went hiking on the cliffs and beaches, exploring forests and hills, and now I want to move there. I didn’t know I could love somewhere that quickly and completely. It was like New Zealand, only better because it’s in England. It’s home. It made me so happy I cried.

I’ve just got home from a quick work trip to Vienna, where the sky was so blue I can’t remember ever before seeing it so rich and dark like that, certainly not in England, and the leaves were red and gold and the people were friendly and it felt like a holiday instead of the first work I’d done in two weeks.

There’s been lots of lovely theatre. That’s where I’m heading tonight as well, to see a friend of mine in a touring musical. As well as enjoying the opening of the new season with my dancing friends, I got to see my favourite play of all, Noises Off, for only the second time a couple of weeks ago. I laughed so much I lost my voice! My beloved Edwin just opened in one of the biggest shows to be touring the UK this year, so I went up to wish him well and it was lovely being in his arms again. I adore that man so much it’s impossible to think that a year ago I hadn’t even met him yet.

No, a year ago today I was flying home from Australia with Chris, Jon and Simon. We were about to go to Italy. None of us had any clue what was headed our way....

My life is currently richer in friendships than it’s ever been. I probably shouldn’t resent so much the loss of Annette, but it does still hurt when she looks at me like I’m an irritating stranger like she did last weekend in Leicester. I thought in Plymouth the week before that maybe we could at least salvage a polite acquaintanceship from our ten years of being best friends, but she won’t even let that happen. It hurts a lot, but maybe I’ve finally accepted that it’s over for good. It would be easier if I didn’t have to keep seeing her at the theatre, though.

Work’s been a bit hit and miss. I spent a month in Singapore, came home for a few days (just long enough to see a couple of shows, one choreographed by a friend of mine that I’ve been dying to see all year), then headed to Dubai for was meant to be three weeks but mercifully ended early, which is why I could come home and join Edwin for the opening night of his new tour. Somewhere amidst that I also caught up with some ballet friends who were performing for Jon’s old company in Canterbury, with another friend in Sheffield who’s about to join a dance company in Budapest, chilled out on beaches on three continents and finally caught the wretched mouse that tried to take over my apartment while I was gone (caught him in my suitcase, silly thing).

So I’ve been busy, and the busyness doesn’t look like it’ll be ending any time soon. Which is good, I suppose. Because life does go on, even when others’ lives stop.

(It’s been twelve weeks and two days and I still think about him every single day and wonder how I’m supposed to live without him there. Jon, I miss you so much.)