Lost in a Fog

It's coming up on a year since my husband died.  This is the time he started to be sick.  I expected to be in for a tough time this month, and unfortunately I was right.  Last weekend I had two meltdowns over small things.....

I've had periods where the rollercoaster ride from hell has seemed to mellow.  Sometimes it smooths out for a bit, sometimes it starts to feel like I'm going up.  But then it drops down again.  The worst is the corkscrew portion where I don't even know which way is up.

This morning started pretty good.  I woke up feeling optimistic, did my morning writing and actually did some yard work.  But then as I headed to town for a doggie playdate (a fun activity with a very nice friend that I was looking forward to) the grief miasma descended.  I showed up for a few things, but then was just so de-energized I came home.  I'm exhausted most of the time.  The rollercoaster has worn me out.

As I continue to move through the grief, I keep realizing how much is lost in addition to the man I loved.  There is no security for me in this new land.  Old beliefs have either been stripped away or are so in my face that I need to let them go.  Some of the old beliefs I intellectually knew didn't work and have tried for years to will them away.  Or I believed I had let go of them, but now, stripped to my essence, I discover they've still been there.  And now they're at the surface, not working and I can no longer hang onto them.

For the last 28 years, I believed that if I could align with the universe, tune into my higher power, everything would be okay.  I believed that everything happened for a reason.  I no longer believe that everything happens for a reason, sometimes it just happens.  I don't believe in some deity that randomly decides it's time for someone to die for some "purpose".  I just think we're born and we die and it just happens when it happens for no particular reason.  And it doesn't matter how tuned in I am, when people die, everything is not okay.  Nothing will ever be the same.  There's no reason, no sense.  It just is.

I've discovered there is nothing I can count on.  There is no stability, no security.  Jim promised he would never abandon me.  Even as our marriage got worse and worse, he said he would never leave me, because he knew how abandonment was what I most feared.  And then he died.  And left me forever.   While logically I know he didn't "leave me", emotionally I wonder if I made him so miserable, he just wanted to escape me.  If he just gave up.  If it was my fault that he left me.  Which brings me face to face with some beliefs I've carried for most of my life.  I think I can control the world I live in.  If I just do things "right", I can control the outcome.  I really thought I had accepted that there are things I can't control, but now I've discovered how deeply held that belief is.  Tied into that belief is the "nothing I ever do will ever be enough".  Because of course, I can't control the world, I can't control other people, I can't control the outcome of anything.  And of course, things will not, cannot, work out the way I want and I feel it's because I'm not enough.  For years I've said the platitude (and thought I believed it) "Just do the footwork and leave the results in God's hands".  But at a deep core level, I still tried to control.

For years I believed I was a strong, independent woman.  Before I met Jim, I was single for 12 years.  But now I keep discovering how dependent I had become on him.  We were so entwined for 16 years as life and business partners.  I keep tripping over how many small things he did for me to make my life better, to make me happy.  Now that those things are gone, I realize how much I took for granted and how dependent I was on him for my strength.  And now I feel weak.  And alone.  My business is failing.  I thought I make it work, but it's not and I don't know what to do.  I worry that the success I was able to have was because I had Jim next to me and that without him, I'm destined to be a failure.

 Everything I though I could count on is being removed.  I know I can't count on anyone.  They could die at any minute.  Or they have their own lives to deal with and aren't there for me the way I want.  They have their own issues and something offered, that I thought I could rely on is removed.

Lately I've felt like I am lost in a forest in the fog.  I've wandered off my path, it's been closed off to me.  I can't find a new path.  I can't see, I can't hear.  I'm directionless.   I've always had a direction clear to me and now......

I just don't know anything.  So I'll keep doing what I've been doing.  I'll do my best to show up and do what's in front of me.  And trust.  Trust that at some point the fog will lift, a path will open.  Hope that something new and beautiful will arise from the ashes.