This whole widowing thing has a lot of horns on it at the minute and it has been a pretty extraordinary learning curve that just keeps upping the ante.
*note: I’m having a completely self indulgent whinge, here. Feel free to skip this post if you don’t want to roll your eyes a lot.
I think I’m writing this because I’m wallowing in self pity with what I’ve dealt with so far, but at the same time, trying desperately to work out how to take some deep breaths and get ready for the next 2 months which includes rounding out our firsts for the year ... I’m down to 4 on the list of difficult firsts.
Less than a handful and then I will have negotiated all of the firsts - I have mixed feelings about that - it switches between go me *fistpump* and fuck that for a joke because it includes Christmas, my 40th and the anniversary of becoming a widow and me having to accept I will have navigated a year without Pete. And I don’t want it to have been a year. Because honestly, I don’t want it to be a freaking day, let alone a whole year.
Also, at least 3 of the firsts are going to be as difficult, if not harder than any of the difficult, hard, excruciating firsts we’ve already gone through... so I’m a bit ‘come on already...’
So this is my self indulgent wallow - thanks largely to being overtired and really not enjoying the whole reality of it all at the minute - of the things that I’ve continued to learned about widowing. I promise there’s grateful bits in here. But at the minute I’m struggling with the whole forest for the trees thing...
More recent widow learnings:
It’s still exhausting.
It remains enlightening.
It’s constantly draining.
It makes me cry a lot.
It has made me laugh a lot.
It has made me have to defend my decisions a lot.
It has made me make decisions I never thought I’d have to make. Good and bad.
It makes me have to be courteous to people I don’t want to be & have conversations I don’t want to have.
It has opened up my eyes to wonderful people I would never have otherwise met.
I makes me sad.
It has made me feel incredibly loved.
I has made me so very, very lonely.
It has made me feel surrounded by friends.
It has made me realise how lucky I was to have had Pete and our marriage and while it wasn’t perfect, it was ours.
It has made me realise how much I probably took it all for granted.
It’s made me realise how much I’d become accustomed to the sound of snoring and breathing beside me at night (and on the couch during the day on weekends).
It has made me realise how much I do not want to do it all on my own.
It has made me realise, if I need to, I can do it on my own.
It has made me realise that I still don’t like Chardonnay - no matter how much I need a drink.
It has brought back many fun and hazy memories by drinking rum for the first time in 15 years.
It has weakened my resolve and left me sitting sobbing on the shower floor and curled up in a ball in a bed on my own crippled by tears.
It has steeled me to force my way through some of the most unnerving and traumatic days I’ve ever experienced and still be standing at the end of it.
It has educated me about the value of many many aspects of my life and the wonderful people I have in it.
It has made me realise I definitely am very bad at excluding people from my life who make it difficult.
It has made me realise the value of good clothes and a face of make up as armour to protect myself against the reality of my life.
It has made understand that my true friends can see right through it, but some acquaintances merely judge me for it.
It has made me resolve even more to be both a good mother and mentor to our children.
It has made me value good conversation and laughing with friends.
It has made me realise how much I really did enjoy talking to Pete and how much we shared that I cannot and did not share with others.
It has made understand I am really bad at not wandering down social media rabbit holes or into message exchanges with people that just suck the life out of me.
It has made me realise that technology can bring the most wonderful words of support and strength and love and laughs.
Widowing thus far has taught me so much, but I’m really sick of learning. I’d like to stop learning. In fact, I reckon I could have done without most of the lessons it’s taught me in such quick succession and I could have just learned them over the course of my lifetime.
But I wouldn’t be without the people it has brought into our lives - those who were there and those on the edge of the friendship circle, who leaned in, not out.
That is perhaps the greatest lesson I’ve learned - how amazing people can be.
I’d give every lesson I’ve learned in the last 10 months back.
But I wouldn’t give the good people back.
Now I’ll go take a big deep breath. Go to bed. Probably cry about how much I hate all of this (not me, the kids, my life or anything like that... I hate the grief and that we have to endure it) and get up tomorrow and smile at the kids and tell them I love them when they give me a morning cuddle, yell about packing a lunchbox in a reasonable time frame, send them off the school, lament at what a bomb site the kitchen is as I leave it all there to deal with it later, go to work, talk to people and get on with my day.
Because widowing is also equal parts FML and tomorrow is a another day.
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