So this whole widowing rollercoaster still continues to have so many twists and turns to it that sometimes I think it's all just too hard.
And frustratingly, I never get to get off the ride. And I never have control of the ride.
The thing with moving forward, is that it is great. It means that some of the hard bits aren't so hard. That we aren't in the quagmire of not okay.
Except it means we leave stuff behind. And change is forced upon us - because sitting in that quagmire isn't great for anyone, least of all me.
And sometimes that change is amazing. And it is good change. And that change makes me happy.
And sometimes that change is hard. And I don't want to do it. And that change makes me sad.
But, like the Going on a Bear Hunt story suggests: we can't go over it, we can't go under it, we'll have to go through it ...
Quite recently that forced change has turned me inside out and upside down.
Because it has truly caused me the question how and where I fit in this New World Order that is our life.
So much of this year has been okay. Lots of it more than okay - great, even.
It was going so okay that I was pretty sure the antidepressants prescribed when Pete died were simply a placebo. I excitedly told the Dr as much and he suggested weaning off them and seeing how that went ...
Turns out they were doing something ... And holy crazy woman, Batman! Doesn't staring into reality without the drugs make for some interesting viewing!
Note: it was not interesting, I was like an anchor-less ship in the middle of a thunderstorm with a drunk captain yelling and crying at everyone...
I think the biggest challenge remains coming to terms with the fact that what was once my life - the life I knew very well and had become comfortable with - isn't my life anymore, and no matter what I do, it's not coming back and I can't hold onto it forever.
I cannot recreate that life ever again, irrespective of how much I liked it.
And so change must happen, but so much of it is forced change, and change that forces you to give up things you might have once liked or enjoyed, forces you to reassess things you thought you knew to be true, forces you to be a different person.
Part of that is simply the passage of time. I mean, the kids aren't 12, 10, 9 and 6 anymore. They are older. Most of them are at high school. There's almost 3 teenagers in the house.
How I parented them as younger kids and when I had a husband around is completely different to now - and I have to, because they are not those little kids any more.
Through covid our lives were so different to what they were before. Remote schooling 4 kids for 3/4 of the last two school years while trying to work changed us all. It made us closer in some respects, and tore down every single one of us to our bare bones of coping.
This week I went to an event which had been such a feature of our lives before Pete died, in so many ways, that when I went back after two years of covid hiatus, it all just felt foreign. Like it was somewhere I had been before but it didn't fit the same way. It fit awkwardly - it fitted the person I was before, and not necessarily now.
There were parts of it that still fitted, sure. There were faces that were familiar. But then lots of it didn't fit. I don't have the insights to people and things like I did back then.
It was like putting on an old shoe. It felt familiar but it didn't fit right.
A lot of the forced change has been hard to handle.
But then not all of it has been bad.
There are old bad habits that needed to change. And that is good.
No two relationships are ever the same, and so the forced change in my view of what having a relationship with another person looks like hasn't been bad - in fact, in lots and LOTS of ways its been very good.
And it has definitely reiterated that love for people is an infinite and unlimited thing - like when you have one baby and you can't think of possibly finding space in your heart to love another one as much, and then they come along and you do ... turns out with relationships its like that, too ... heart space and caring and kindness is infinite, too.
But as anyone who knows me well understands, I am SUPER bad at tossing old things away and letting go of the past.
I can hoard things that were important well past their useful stage and hold on to things for too long.
And the more someone tells me to let it go, the more I rage against the change.
In the last two months, I've raged against that forced change so much.
I thought I was so sure of the things I knew.
Turns out, I just need to let go of some things. Irrespective of how important they were then, and embrace what I need to make important now.
And that's harder than I thought it would be.
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