Before and After

On Monday morning it will be a year and a half.  Eighteen months ago I lived some of the hardest days of my life.

When you are in the midst if it, the pain is so incompassing that you don't know how you'll possibly survive.  The death of your husband, the end of a life you loved, the end of a life you shared; it is horrible.  The grief doesn't stop with time, but life goes on and the experience of the grief changes.  As a good friend describes it, when the loss is fresh it is your entire experience; you life within the grief.  As time passes, the grief doesnt go away but it becomes a part of your life as opposed to your entire experience.  Like it or not, life goes on and the loss becomes just a part of it.  The pain does not lessen, but it allows room for other experiences and emotions.

A year and a half later, I miss Brian every day.  I miss the life we shared.  I still have trouble understanding how I am living and experiencing new things - both good and bad - that Brian is not a part of.  But I'm alive, and living means moving on and trying to build a new, happy, and fulfilling life.

I am living.  I no longer feel like I'm just surviving.  I have joy, gladness and love.  I'm experiencing things every day that Brian will never experience.  I'm finding room for happiness.

One thing that I'm realizing is that I was never truly happy before Brian.  I didn't have a horrible childhood, but I was not a particularly happy child.  My first marriage was not a good one, and I realize now how much I struggled to control things that were out of my control throughout that relationship.

I was never good at being alone.  I was never comfortable with solitude.  So now, I'm not returning to a former state of contentment, I'm trying to figure out how to be happy on my own.  Something new that is hard and often terrifying.

I do have good times.  I have formed new relationships and have enjoyed wonderful times.  There are elements in this new life that make me extremely happy and bring me true joy.  Things are not bad.  But I'm lonely.  Even after a great day, when I turn off the lights each night I am alone, and I'm still not comfortable with my own company.  I still hate solitude.

I want more.  I know that Brian is gone, and I know that I can be happy again, I just don't know how to make this new life happy.  How to let my new found joy and love become the core of a new and happy life.  I have to learn, relatively late in life, how to be happy and fulfilled with all the good that I have.  I have to take the experience of joy that I learned with Brian, and apply it to a life without him.  I know that I can do it, but it is a difficult thing to accomplish.

I question if my happiness was tied to my identity as Brian's wife rather to my identity as an individual.  I'm no longer a wife, but I am still me.  Better for the experience of true love, smarter for the experience of a healthy relationship, stronger for the pain and loss.

Life after Brian will never be the same, but it doesn't have to revert to the unhappiness of life before Brian.  Life after can be beautiful.  I can love, feel, enjoy and grow as a more whole individual.  I can try to lessen my grasp on the loss, and allow the beauty and memory of love form the new and improved me.  And even though this has been hard, I see and feel it happening.  I'm not content with the whole of my life right now, but I am very happy with parts of it.  I owe it to myself to figure this out and to make a happy life for myself and the people that I love.

I don't know why Brian had to die so young.  There is no reason.  Bad things happen, and life is shaped by how we deal with them - how we move on.

I am moving on.  I'm not leaving him behind because our love and marriage have shaped me.  I'm taking him with me, because I'm not willing to give up happiness and love in my life.

Lonely

I'm lonely.

I have amazing friends, and I spend time with them.  When I'm with people I care about I can feel joy, and I can experience laughter. I can forget that I'm lonely for a time.  But at the end of the day, I go to bed alone.  I wake up alone.  I come home from work, and I'm alone.  I eat meals (or skip meals) alone.  I do the laundry, wash the dishes, sweep the floor - alone.  Nobody greats me with a hug.  Nobody asks how my day was.  Nobody tells me about their day, discusses world events, talks to me about people we know, because nobody is there.

I have love, I have friends; but I have no partner to come home to.  To share my life with.  I have never been good alone.  I hate living alone.  I shouldn't feel lonely because I have so many wonderful people in my life, and yet I am alone and lonely.

How do I make what I have enough?  How do I become comfortable living by myself?  How does this existence become fulfilling?

Celebrate life?

Today was my birthday, and it was fine, mostly because it was just another day.  I didn't have special plans.  In fact, I didn't see anyone today.  Other than an avalanche of Facebook wishes, I didn't have to think about birthdays, occasions or celebrations.  I ran errands and cooked.  I spoke with a few friends.  I just got through the day.

I know that life is the right choice, and that aging beats the alternative.  I'm grateful that I'm basically healthy and comfortable.  I just wish I could find a reason to feel that my choice of life is the right choice.

One day, hopefully not too soon, I'll die.  I'll simply cease to exist.  I hope that I can find a way to make the time between now and then meaningful.  Maybe then, in 2015, I'll feel a reason to celebrate life.