Thanks to Hyperbole and a Half...

Read this.  I'll wait here.  You really do need to read this, ok?

Hyperbole and a Half - Depression Part 2

So, I've talked about the depression - the profound depression that David had.  That at the age of eight he had his first attempt at suicide and his mom saw what he was doing and convinced him that he'd not lived enough life yet to know if it wasn't for him.

And I talked about his not ever wanting to marry - that his views weren't only based on an intellectual view that marriage is problematic*, but based on the fact that he'd committed to his mom that he'd live till he was 30, knowing that at that point he might have a better grasp on his desire, or lack thereof, to live.

I know I talked about asking him for 10 years when after he turned 30, he revealed the depths of his depression to me.  And I have talked about how life just kept getting less and less palatable for him.  I have broken these bits up, because even I couldn't look at them all together.  Even now, writing this - I've tears streaming down my face... this is really hard.

But I read today's Hyperbole and a Half and I understand in a way I couldn't when so close to the one experiencing the pain.

I mean, touching me was so painful to him, because he wanted to see me happy - he could experience happy through me but he could feel none of it.  I don't think there is anything worse than wanting to feel with someone who wants to love you.  He was so incredibly tender with me, but none of it reached his eyes in the last few years.  That it wasn't just that depression stole physical intimacy with my husband - that the not-feeling made it so painful for him to even touch me.  That NOT touching me hurt me as much as touching me hurt him because he couldn't feel, and that caused him so much hurt. 

I know it was ONE of the factors that leaving made sense to him - because then I could find someone who could enjoy and participate with me (so convoluted).  He really loved me so much that he wanted me to have the best.  Someone asked me why finding love again was so high on my list - and there are a few reasons, but one of them is because I don't want his stupid death to be in vain.  I want to live life so fully because he wanted that for me so much that he DIED so I could have it.

He loved me so much and he just couldn't find a way to see that living was anything more than years and years of crawling across broken glass for himself.  He could see how his sad/depression/nothing hurt me because I wanted him to be happy - and there was nothing I could do to make that happen.  He believed that there was nothing that he could do for himself to make that happen either.  So not living was preferable.

 

I guess I am writing some of this out like this because I am processing it... but also to acknowledge that while I understand situational depression - and we all do - that the type of depression that David had, and that Allie is dealing with, and I know that some of you out there have?  I know it's a different thing.  I hope you have someone in your life who loves you even though this is where you are.  I hope too, like Allie, you are finding ways to reconnect with yourself - meds, therapy - whatever.  What you are experiencing is a chemical thing.  You aren't a bad person, there is no judgment from me if this is where you are... only care and love.  Please, please find a way to get to the corn.  The rest will come, albeit it might come slowly.  I wish I could have been able to get David help - that he'd allow it, but that is and was something I was unable to do.

 

 

*Not a topic I want to get into here, there are much better writers on the subject, should you want to explore further.

Another no photo post...

I've not been great about getting out and getting more photos.  My work life picked up again, as has my social life and getting out on the bright days for photos just hasn't happened.  I miss it.  I miss being outside and snapping away.  It'll happen soon again I am sure.

I've been very honest in this venue of this blog, and that will continue with today's post.  I am all stirred up.  Things are confusing right now.  *I* am confusing to myself right now and I don't care for it.  Since I was a young person, it has been my goal to be my most authentic self.  And right now, I'm off-kilter.  There are a few external influences on me and I feel like I am in a place of pretty significant change again.  Change that I have brought about for myself.  Wow, I don't think I realized that until I wrote it.  I am choosing this, and it's my doing.

I guess, grief is waxing again because I am feeling myself.  I've allowed myself to be comfortable being insecure for far too much of my life and my husband was a rather stabilizing factor on my person.  He had a distinct quality of gravitas, weighting me, connecting me to life that is bigger than me. I miss that influence.  I crave it.

And here I am again.  I read today a blog post of a woman describing her relationship with her husband... and I started in with the tears.  Theirs is a similar love to the one that I had with David.  That regular, every day kind of breathing love.  The kind of love that is so natural to be like breathing.  It's a crave-able thing.

He's visiting now, in the moments before I wake.  Those dreams that come unbidden, encouraging me reaching out, finding a hand for me to hold.  He wants me to find love again, and I am... well, I'm not lost, I'm just moving slowly - more slowly than he'd like.  He tries to show me and I try to explain and then my eyes open to another day of work and life. 

It's taken me a long time to get to this place, and I'm still in love with my husband.  I know he thought he was giving me a better life by going away, and in ways he has - but I miss someone to share this with.  I miss sharing it with him.  I miss his holding me at the end of the day and letting me relax against him and his telling me that it'll all be alright (which he'd add "until it isn't", he was ever the pragmatist).  He'd make me laugh.  He was so bright and so funny.  So few people were able to see his silliness, most wanting his sharp and strategic mind, but he was blessedly silly.  I am terribly serious, but he made me laugh at myself.  He understood me and how to get me to unwind.

I don't expect that I will find anyone who will love me like he did, but maybe I can find someone to love as much as I love, as I loved him. 

What I know to be true:

What I know to be true:
Life is an adventure that you can't do alone.
Adventures aren't always awesome.  Sometimes they are really hard.
Loving someone isn't always about you, it isn't always about them, sometimes it's beyond you both.
Fall down seven times, get up eight.
There is room for great in your life if you want it.
Love will expand to the limits you give it.
There is more than enough for everyone to have more than enough.
Smile.  It is the most attractive thing you can put on.
People want to love someone who gives love.
Even grief is damn funny.
It's the quiet ones you have to look out for, but in a good way.
Warm laughter is one of the best things to hear.

Things I want to be true about me - or said about me:
She eats life.
You can't be around her without feeling like you are loved.
She gives you the time and space to be yourself, and she seems to like you.
She gives the BEST hugs.
She encourages me to be my best.
When I am with her I feel like anything is possible.

Things I learned from David:
Whatever you do, put your whole heart into it.
The most painful thing in the world is to love someone you can't trust.
It's ok to let people who don't add to you go - with love.  You make room for other people.
How to give the best hug in the world.
Put financial things into a perspective you can own.
Learn all of the rules so you know how to break some of the rules.

Things I learned from grief:
I have a lot of resources to pull from.
I am not finished with life.
Love is dynamic, expansive, fulfilling and not easily controlled - but gracious.
There is room enough.
Salt water is healing, weather it's the sea or it's tears.
People want to embrace you, if you let them.

Two weeks left...

before I am a year into this lifetime sentence.  Last night was bad, today is even worse.  My heart is broken and some days it feels as though it will never be whole again.  It's unfair when a 6'4" hole was torn from a 5'3" person, today I feel like there is very little of me left.



 My eyes are raw, they itch.  I am aware that I look like I've been not sleeping - though I have.  There is a heaviness that I can't escape.

 My in laws, who I love, are planning to come and visit next week, but I feel even more raw now than I did the last time they stayed.  I don't want them here, yet I don't want them not to come.

 I can't bear being touched.  The thought of it makes my skin itch.

 It's only been a few days of this - this time, I know it's acute depression and that it comes and goes. I know this time it's coinciding with the anniversary.  Knowing doesn't help.

 I have a few weeks before my busy season starts, then I will be so blessedly busy again that I will   not have time to think.  I will not have time to feel.  I will forget how alone I am without him.  I will forget that he left me alone and that my worst fear has been realized and that I am, again, alone.

 I have been clearing out my house in preparation of both the visit and being that busy again.  Organizing and finishing up decorating my house - in anticipation of a life I do not have.

 I've been looking around at Spring's start in my yard and it's so beautiful.  I love all of the buds opening and the flowers starting to bloom.  The loveliness makes me ache.  He was the photographer.   I am the impostor.

 I am a woman with a camera wishing I could show off to him what I learned from him.  I wish I could see through the lens what he saw.  But he is not ever coming back, he will never see.

And there is nothing that fills that hole.  There is nothing that is going to make this right.  Will I ever not ache?  I hurt.  I hurt all of the time, I just don't look at the wound much.  I hide it away.  Who wants to see that kind of pain, this much loss?  Who wants to be close to someone this damaged?

 As it turns out, there are a few people who have been both available and persistent.  I don't open deeply easily.  If you asked me 5 minutes after writing this if I was ok?  I'd tell you that I was.  These annoying people keep at my door, push to have me participate in life with them, are on the phone, pinging me online.  These pushy, pushy people.  I am ever grateful.

 The truth is, without them, I probably wouldn't be breathing.  I am not ever intending to leave, I can't even imagine it.  But heartbreak?  I think it really can kill you.  There were a few days through this year where I didn't know if I could climb out of bed, where making food to survive was too much.

 One of my friends says that this last bubble of time before the anniversary is just the worst and then things ease a bit.  I hope so.  I hope so.

 In the mean time, there is this time.  This achy, slow moving, torture of time that I must endure and move through.  I am trying to find ways to make it more enjoyable, but it is hard going.  I am going to be ok.  I know I will.  I am just not ok right now.

Life goes on...

 

On March 6th, eleven months past the death of my best friend, one of my dearest intimates died giving birth to her long-anticipated first born child, a son.

T.J. and I were just about as opposite as two women who liked each other could get in many ways, and yet man, we were inseparable for about seven years.

 I don't have a lot to say right now, except that I am so glad that we had time to reconnect, time to talk again, time to be excited about your new adventure, time to be honest and time to express our love and friendship again.  You were, you ARE such an influence to who I am now.  I am convinced that I loved the man I loved because he was so like you.  I'm going to miss you, 2 am never passes when I am awake that I don't think of you.  I hope your precious Jesus is giving you the welcome you deserve and that heaven is far more awesome than you ever anticipated.  I hope that all of the questions have answers, the struggles make sense, and your purpose is fulfilled. 

I miss you, I love you and I believe I'll see you again.

 

P.S. Your baby is just beautiful.  You did good, mama. 

Turning a corner...

 I got brave and checked out a new beach on Sunday.  It had been recommended to me last Autumn, but it seems that every Sunday (my regular beach walk day) it was either too windy or wet, and I didn't know the area well, so I didn't know what I was getting into.  There is smart and stupid and I prefer to err on the side of safe when walking alone.  Sunday was sunny and really pretty. 
Adventure Ho!

 After all the plodding, pondering, planning, and praying I've been in a pretty good place.  Who I am is who I am, and I've been working on letting me like me where I am right now.  I think I'm in a pretty good place with that.  I am combing through all the things I have to see what I can let go of again. When I moved here I packed anything that felt important and now nearly a year later, it's time to let go of things I don't really need anymore - I'm sure I'll have a few more rounds of that as I go.

 I feel like I am starting to crest a ridge of this grief.  I remember going through this when my dad passed.  That certain things would fill my eyes with salted water unbidden, for him it was Panera, Lunds Grocery, driving past HCMC, or seeing something that I wanted to tell him about, like a movie he'd have enjoyed, a book, or something that would have piqued his interest. I'm starting that again.

 On Wednesday, it will be 11 months.  I notice the tears are like Summer rain showers, the ones that come from the tiniest cloud, pour rain for a moment and then are gone before you can even take cover.  Little things, like commenting that a child carries the same expression he did, squeeze my heart, crumple my face, and start me leaking.  I miss him in the ways of the every day familiar.  Yet, I'm making food he didn't like and enjoying it because I can, I don't have to hide the milk when I need some for a recipe because he'll drink it all, I never have to check on how much XYZ is left, because I am the only one who uses things here and my memory is pretty good.

 Sometimes this is really hard, because I spent 15+ years learning his stuff, and now I have to unlearn.  Yet, the mark of my person lingers.  Not a bad thing, just what it is.  I know you've gone though loss - divorce, loss of a friend, lover, parent, grandparent, spouse, child... the possibilities are endless, it's the thing of life that we all end in death.  Yet there is beauty here.

 Not in me alone, but D is remembered and lives on.  Your person lives on in you.  Part of loving is missing the beautiful, elegant, difficult and frustrating things about them.  Those things that no one in the world knows about that person because of your unique interface and time together.  Those things that are, in all practicality lost because those are unique to you two.  Those things float up from the depths of ourselves and remind us of our love, remind us of our loss, just remind us.

So, I am here.  It's a good place.  I am healthy and safe enough to remember, to miss, to cry, to go on.  I am strong, resilient, I am mostly happy and sometimes in pain.  I might not know who I will be tomorrow, but I know who I am today, and I like me, I like that a lot. 

I really am in a pretty good place.

What I Want...

I am feeling sorry for myself.  It was bound to happen, I'm teetering on the verge of a stupid depression and it's really my own fault.  I'm not managing my space and time very well and I am trying to make something happen that I really have no control over, and my ability to control... ANYTHING seems to be slipping.  Feeling sorry for one's self is very productive, no?

I sit down and write lists and lists of what I want - for my life, for my home, my business, in a relationship, in a man, for the future, for now.  I'd have written the equivalent of a forest if I weren't so attached to typing over hand written things.  Good thing I can password protect.

I am trying.  Trying to let go, trying to move on, trying to not hurt, trying to let myself grieve, trying to be open to the future, trying to get over my past, trying to stay tender, trying to not get jaded - lots of effort.  All this trying is really trying.

I seem to only write here when I'm working through stuff, when I have a good way to conclude the thought and how to acknowledge the path forward.  Trouble is that I've not found a path, I don't know what the hell I'm doing.  It's been a few weeks since my last post and while I love being home so much, I'm still adrift.  Work is picking up again, but that only is a few hours each day. I love my simple social life - I take a ballet class, I've a group of friends I see once a week, I have lunch now and again with a friend or two - somehow it's not enough.  I miss being a wife and the purpose that gave me - even if I don't know if I want to fill that role again - keeping someone going takes a lot of effort and strength and I don't know what to do with the extra time or effort. Who wants to cook or clean for themselves?   I'm eating ok, and and though my house isn't as organized as I'd like, I'm just struggling with the "be" in being.

I know it gets better.  I know this is just the process.  I know I will have a lovely life again, that I have a lovely life... that what I am struggling with is sort of my place in my life.  I'm trying to define what I want and then trying to figure out how to get there.  I don't know quite how to do that, but hell, I didn't know how to do it before.  Maybe I just need to roll with it, ride the wave, just get to whatever my best self is and as I do, draw the best stuff to me.  Sounds like a great plan, doesn't it?

I know it sounds like I'm in kinda rough shape.  I'm not, I mean, I am - but I'm not too.  I am realizing what a great catch I am and what a quality human being both inside and out.  I am trying hard to remember the word, "Adventure", as my husband used to call the things that scared me.  I know it'll get better.  I just would really, really like it to be better now.