Forever Broken...

Hey Babe,

It’s your 16th month deathversary!!  16 months ago, I could barely breathe, let alone ever think that I would survive this trauma and be able to function in a world where you didn’t exist.  Before, everything seemed like it was standing still and time was passing by at a painstakingly slow speed. Now, everything feels like it’s whirling by and moving at the speed of light.  There are times, where I feel like I’m chasing after time and can’t keep up. But, as we all know, time moves at the same speed. It never changes. It's constant.

I’m sure you’re wondering what I’ve been up to lately since I barely write.  Well, to be quite honest, I’ve written you pages and pages of letters in my head.  The words and stories have never stopped. We’re chatting everyday, but now our conversations are in my head.  I try to write, but the words just don’t want to come out anymore. I remember reading Option B where Sheryl Sandberg says that you write until you are done, and you will know when you are done!  I don’t know if I’m done. I just think it’s progressed to a different level where the grief process has extended beyond just the pain and sadness, so it’s more difficult to write when you have no clue how you’re feeling or what’s going on in your life.  I’m in the part of the grief process where I’m trying to figure out who I am without you and where I want to go next without all the eyes staring and watching me, even though I know more than ever, I’m still living in a fishbowl. Even if people want me to think they’re not watching anymore, they are.  Everybody is still watching and even more curious with what’s going on with me. Is she “really” okay? Will she be able to move on? When is she going to start dating? (Even your mom was curious about the last question. Apparently, so is my mom. She told my sister that she hopes I start dating soon so I’m not so lonely by myself up there were her exact words.)

I think people want some sort of marker or sign that I’m better and ready to move on with my life, and somehow that marker for widow(er)s is dating.  But, what people don’t understand is that there’s no such thing as “better” or “moving on” from widowhood. Your death isn’t ever going to leave me or go away.  To my dismay, I’m starting to learn there’s never really going to be a “better” and I’m never going to “move on” with my life. There’s no such thing, even if I’m dating or get remarried.  I don’t think people really understand that there's no finish line in this journey unless they’re a widow(er) themselves.  Even I have a hard time accepting that there’s no finish line in this journey.  If anything, I feel like I'm always trying to rush to the finish line myself.  Your death and my widowhood journey has essentially become a part of who I am.  It's my story now.  It’s in every breath I take.  It’s forever changed who I am and all the relationships around me, even the ones that started out without you and / or didn’t even involve you.  There are even friends who will be changed forever as a result of your passing.  We have all forever changed, whether they know it or not and even if they all go through their lives as if nothing has happened. We’re different. Our perspectives have changed. Our value system has been disrupted, turned upside down, and changed.  Who I am now is not who I was when you were alive. I will never be the person that I was when you were alive. I know I’m still far from “becoming” the person I’m meant to be and I’m still undergoing my metamorphosis, but even the person that stands before me in the mirror is drastically different from the person I was when you were alive.  I don’t know, maybe you might like this SY better!! 🤣😂🤣😂  She’s finally becoming the person you’ve always wanted her to be. She may have resisted when you were alive, but now she has surrendered to it. Sometimes, it takes a traumatic and earth shattering event to put things in perspective and truly understand and see what’s important in life.

To a certain extent, I am “better” but not in the way people think.  Better in that the pain and sadness no longer consumes my life, even if it hurts the same today as it did 16 months ago.  I’ve gotten better at coping and managing the grief and not letting it take me down or slow me down. With anything else in life, there’s a  learning curve with coping and managing pain and grief.  It doesn’t get better with time, you just get better at managing it and not letting it affect you the way it used to when it first happened. You get better at putting on a show for the world to see and gracing the world with this “I’m okay” and “grief ain’t got nothing on me” persona, but when the curtain goes down and you’re at home in the quiet of the night, there’s a different persona that emerges; one where there’s still great pain and sadness in your heart.  Where you still long and ache for your dying husband to come home. Where you still sleep on your side of the bed and stare at his side, wondering when he will come back. Where every moment of happiness you experience is even harder, sadder, and more painful than the pain and grief you’re going through because you’re not able to share it with your person. You feel even sadder and more alone than before because the world thinks you’re doing better than you really are and you can’t really tell anybody that you’re really not that “better” since you’ve worked so hard to make sure the world thinks and believe you’re better, so they would stop staring at you, but later you figured out that even if they’re not staring at you like they did before, they still haven’t really taken you out of their line of sight yet.  Instead, they’re watching you from afar and at their peripheral. They’re still watching and curious to see what you will do next and whether you’ve really landed on your feet or not.

I wish I can say I’ve picked up the pieces of my broken life and somehow put them back together.  I wish I can say with confidence that I am “better” or “strong” or “so put together after such a tragic experience,” but, in all honesty, nothing has been picked up or put back together.  I am not better and I’m definitely not strong. And obviously, I’m very good at faking it until I make it. If anything, I’ve been distracting myself and closing my eyes to all the pieces that lay broken and scattered all over the floor around me. (I’ve come to learn that avoidance is one of my best coping mechanisms.)  I don’t even know where to begin or how to start picking up the broken pieces of my life around me; let alone sorting them into logical piles so I can start making sense of it all and put them back together. So, the broken pieces lay scattered all over the floor while I carry on with my life.  I've been closing my eyes and walking over them on a daily basis.  I figure when I'm ready, I will know and there’s no need to force myself or set some sort of timeline or schedule of when they need to be done or in what order they should be done, especially since the timeline and schedule just adds undue and unwarranted stress and pressure. So, let’s see what still needs to be sorted and “catalogued” in my life:

• Your stuff is still in the closet and all over the house (I did finally throw away some of your junk food and snacks from the pantry a few months ago!  Is that considered an accomplishment?! I have no clue, but I think it can be considered “progress.”) For the most part, I’ve been mentally ready for this exercise for some time, but emotionally, I still struggle with it.  I finally realize my biggest issue is where to donate your things. I don’t want to just dump it at goodwill. I want to find a cause or organization that has some higher purpose or mission beyond just “goodwill.” Your things hold so much sentimental value to me that to just give them up without putting some conscious effort or thought into how they will be used has been the biggest impediment to getting rid of your stuff.  I want to be thoughtful about it, but I just haven’t been able to find the courage or strength to put the thought I need into it, so I rather have them sitting around unused and serving as a constant reminder of my biggest lost and pain until I can find the courage and strength to put some real thought into it.
• I’ve yet to figure out if I could live with a roommate (Even though I’ve done tons of research and figured out the best situation for me: short-term rentals for traveling healthcare professionals.  The company keeps stalking me about listing the empty rooms for rent. I’ve even decorated the two spare rooms and they are rental worthy and ready, but I haven’t been able to take pictures of the rooms and house to start listing the rooms)
• Still no clue who I am or what it means to be “just be me without you.” (This whole “identity” crisis being a side effect of widowhood is still the biggest shocker for me!!)
• Other side effects of widowhood that I’m still struggling with or trying to work through or figure out (not an exhaustive list since most of the time, I can barely keep up with what issues I still have or is working through!!  It’s a good thing I still have widow’s brain because I think I would have gone mad if I could actually really remember everything. Yup, there’s actually times where widow’s brain is a blessing in disguise!!):
  • Since I’ve reached a point where grief no longer consumes my life, I’ve started to notice that I’m oddly socially awkwardly all of the sudden (at least I hope it’s just a recent thing and I wasn’t always socially awkward but just didn’t know it! hahaha)  I finally discussed it with my therapist a couple of months ago and she laid it out for me. “You’ve lost your dance partner and now you have to learn a new dance. You’re still trying to figure out the choreography of this new dance you need to learn.” (And it’s safe to say, it’s not just me that has to learn this new choreography, it’s also all the people around me.  I’m not only learning a new dance and trying to find my footing and balance, but I also have to do it with the entire village as they are also staring at me while I do it. Yeah, it doesn’t sound like fun to be either!)
  • For awhile now, my therapist says that I will have to start “renegotiating” my relationships (all of them, not just the ones where you were part of).  I didn’t really know what this meant, but I guess you can say I’m in the throes of it now. These last few weeks have been rough. I feel like there’s a lot of fires raging around me and they’re all starting to close in and consume me, probably to a point where I’ve probably shut down emotionally as a self-preservation and coping mechanism.
  • I guess for the last year or so, I’ve been staring at our life and asking myself what I want to “pack” and take with me on the next part of my journey.  There are times where I want everything and then there are other times where I want nothing. I’ve come to realize it’s really hard to “konmari” your life when everything you hold sparks joy while also invokes immense pain and sadness at the same time.  Marie Kando did say to start with the things that aren’t sentimental like clothes so you have time to learn and build up the ability to discern what sparks joy and what doesn’t before tackling the sentimental items. I guess I haven’t figured out what part of our life can be equated to “clothes,” the unsentimental things since even your clothes have become sentimental.  Well, she did say start with your own stuff before you can even start tackling your dead husband’s stuff (she has a netflix show now and I watched the episode where she helps a widow with “purging” her husband’s belongings).
  • Learning how to move from “we” to “I” mode.  I guess I never realized how much we really “depended” on each other.  There’s so many things we take for granted. You get accustomed to something for so long that it becomes second nature like breathing.  It’s an evolution that happens slowly over time and before you know it, it just is and we didn’t even notice or realize it happened, and you don’t realize or appreciate what you had until it’s gone.  I never realized how intertwined our lives have become. Even doing mundane everyday things is hard, if not harder than the big milestone events like birthdays and anniversaries. In my opinion, the hardest part of widowhood is everyday life.  You get used to having someone to talk to, eat dinner and watch TV with on a daily basis. Now I have no one. I come home to an empty house and eat dinner by myself. It’s hard to even watch TV alone (especially the shows we used to watch together) that I barely watch TV.  Then there’s the harder stuff like when you have a bad day or there’s drama in your life or when something awesome or amazing happens; you want to tell someone but you realize you have nobody to share these things with anymore. The person you tell everything to isn’t here anymore.  (And it’s not the same when you share these things with other people!!) You have no one to help share in the burden of “life’s problems” with and no one to hold you and tell you it’s going to be okay. Even happiness is hard, if not worse. I have to learn how to carry and shoulder all the burdens, drama, and happiness of life by myself now.  
  • I’m still trying to figure out how to maintain a relationship with you as I continue to progress through my life.  I guess my way of dealing and coping with some of life’s biggest struggles and challenges is to accept things as they are and I don’t try to fix or solve anything.  I’ve come to learned that there are things in life that I cannot change or control, so I leave them as they are, where they are, and I just move on and try to not look back or dwell on it.  I guess that’s not how I will be able to get through this challenge in my life (at least that’s what the therapist keeps telling me). So, I guess I can’t just stuff you inside a shoebox and put you on a shelf somewhere to collect dust!  Ironically, I’ve already started doing this!! I put a bunch of things pertaining to your death or that I’ve collected after your death for whatever reasons inside a shoebox on a shelf somewhere. I just couldn’t deal with seeing them or looking at them anymore laying around the house and I didn’t have a place marked for putting things away from your dead husband’s funeral (as you know, Konmari’s philosophy is that everything has to have place so you know where to put it).   
  • I also struggle a lot with the “what’s next” part of my life.  There are days where I’m comfortable and complacent with living our life by myself while there are other days where it brings so much hostility and pain to do so.  There are days where I just want to sell everything I own, quit my job, and run away somewhere where nobody knows my name or who I am. But then there’s the animals...what do I do with them?!  Sometimes, the animals are a blessing while other times they feel like a curse holding me back. The animals keep me grounded and tethered to our life and brings me the most joy while other times they become an impediment to my desire to just give up and run far away from everything I know.  

• All the traveling for both work and personal...what does it mean?  For the most part, I think traveling helps me to take a step back, “look inside the box” and reflect on my life from a different perspective.  It also doesn’t hurt that I’m anonymous when I’m traveling. I can be anybody I want to be. I don’t have to be the grieving widow going through an identity crisis!  I’ve never realize how liberating it can be to be unknown. To be anonymous. To not be seen. To be just another indiscernible face in the crowd. To not feel like you’re being watched and judged for every little thing you do.  Okay, I won’t lie, it also helps with distracting and avoiding my #widowhoodstruggles!! It’s so much easier to forgive and be patient with myself when I say, “I’m too busy with work and life, so it’s okay to put my #widowhoodstruggles on the back burner for now until I have more time and bandwidth to deal with it” than to just admit “I just do not have the emotional and mental fortitude to deal with my #widowhoodstruggles!”  Yes, avoidance is a good coping mechanism until it isn’t!! Sometimes, I just need a vacation from being a widow!! Is that too much to ask for?

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Even though most of my life is still one big fat question mark...there are a few things that I know definitely to be true so far on my journey.

• It’s okay to not be okay. It’s okay to still cry, be sad, and mourn your death.  It’s okay to still miss you and want you back. (Even though I prefer to do these things in the comfort of my own home out of view from the world now!)
• It’s okay to ask for help when I need it (even if it’s been 16 months and people think I’m okay!)
• Grief isn’t a linear process.  I have to continue to be patient and forgiving with myself, even on days where I feel like I’ve taken 10 steps backward instead of forward.  
• Grief has no timeline or schedule, and I cannot control or manage my pain, emotions, and grief.  I have to surrender to the pain, sadness, and grief if I want to survive this journey.
• I’m a warrior.  I don’t need anybody to hold my hand through this journey, and I can’t hold anybody’s hand through my crisis either.  I don’t need to be coddled, handled, or managed. I don’t need people’s sympathy or pity. I don’t need anybody to make me feel better or to give me empty and meaningless platitudes.  I just need people to treat me like normal (even if there’s nothing normal about me) and show me love, support, and compassion, and if they can’t give me these things then it’s okay to ask for space and keep a comfortable distance.    
• I refuse to get lost in the void.  I chose to get up every morning to live for the both of us.  I will always chose to celebrate your life, cherish our memories, and smile because it happened instead of crying because it ended (even though crying because it ended is okay also!)
• I am not strong.  Surviving widowhood doesn’t just require strength.  It requires resilience and elasticity. The definition of strength is just the ability to withstand great force and/or pressure whereas the definition of resilience is the ability to withstand and/or recover quickly from difficulties and the definition of elasticity is the ability to change and adapt.  I bounced back not because I’m strong but also because I’m resilient and elastic. Strength is just one part of the equation; resilience and elasticity are the other part.
• I will never be okay or better again.  I will never “get over this” or “move on,” but I will survive, I will learn to “move forward” and “expand my heart,” I will find happiness and joy again, even though they will be viewed from a different lens and perspective.  
  • “Moving forward” is very different from “moving on.”  Just because I chose to laugh and smile and continue living the best and fullest life I can doesn’t mean I’ve “moved on.”  I’ve just decided to “move forward” with my life. There is no “moving on” from your husband dying prematurely with no notice.  I will live with this event for the rest of my life. It has become a part of me and of who I am. It has and will forever change me.
  • Learning to “expanding my heart” means that I can make room for someone else in my life and heart when the time comes while also loving you as much now as I did when you were alive.
• I am learning the importance of living in the moment and always being present where I am.  To not think too far ahead or worry about a future I have no control over.
• I’m different.  I’ve changed. I’m no longer the person I was when you were alive.  I will never be that person again, and I also need to mourn her death as well as yours.
• I’m broken but I don’t need to be fixed.   
• I’m broken but the cracks are what makes me beautiful and amazing now (even if I have no clue who I am yet!!) ​