My Journey Continues

One of the emotions that most recently floods my being on a random basis is loneliness. I may choose to fight or embrace it depending on my mood. Loneliness is described in Wikipedia as an unpleasant emotion brought on by a response to isolation.  I don't FEEL isolated and I've never been REALLY lonely before, but I am still trying to peel the skin off how it makes me truly feel.  Every morning I wake up to silence and pause for a moment to listen.  I hear the air inhaling and exhaling from my body, the rain or wind gently blowing against the window, or the in-explainable sounds that a house makes as it breathes.  I never used to notice these vibrations in time, listening instead for my husbands puttering in the kitchen as he made coffee or emptied the dishwasher.  The lack of sound that another living body is near me, reminds me that I am alone and he is gone. Silence, in itself, tells me to listen to my own voice, inside my head.  Who am I?...

My grief is constantly morphing and shaping itself into this omnipotent, invisible force that always has presence around me. My mind is the creator but I have no control of my emotions once I have manifested that sorrow.  The loss is real but unseen, and no one else can feel the pain. That, in itself, is the isolation in which I live. Members of the grief club do not go around wearing an equivalent to Hester’s scarlet A on their chest. I am part of an invisible club. Lately, I stay busy with friends and errands, managing to go several days feeling what I guess I can call, normal…happy, but then inevitably, I am alone, and I remember.  The visceral pain hits my gut and floods my body and brain with an ache of longing so intense, I can’t catch my breath.  Tears are my only outlet and stream forth unwanted and wet. They are messy, snotty and tiresome. Early on, my weeping was silent, sporadic, and personal. I seldom shared them with anyone, because ...

T oday, I struggle.   It’s 9:30 am on a Tuesday, most of the world is busy going to work, sleeping, eating…just living or being productive.   Instead, I sit on my bed, wearing my late husband’s pajama bottoms, t-shirt and sweater, frozen, silently weeping off and on.   I continue to find it strange that life continues to revolve around me as nothing has changed, when my world is so completely different. I look at my husband’s urn that sits on my dresser.   I despise that his body is in there, where I can’t smell his skin or touch his face or hug his body. Knowing that he is burnt to ash and can never be alive again kills me.   I scream at the urn, I HATE that you left me, how DARE you…I miss you…. I look outside my bedroom window; the sun is out, but the warmth emanating is weak, as the temperature is just above freezing.   The beauty of the clear blue sky is small consolation for my sadness. Recently, I discovered Abraham Hicks, the motiva...

I lived in a home filled with fear and anger. I was young, eighteen, living with my first boyfriend, who most recently had become physically abusive. My induction to love was an extension of my relationship with my father. Always reaching for the unattainable, never receiving the approval I was looking for. I was starved, subconsciously looking for male attention. With my father, I never existed. But with this man, I sought to hide. I was coming in from work one evening, being the sole provider, while he had been laid off his most recent construction job. “Hey!” “How was your day?” I asked him closing the front door. “Fine.” He said abruptly barely looking up. I watched him rub my face cream, that I had worked overtime to purchase, into his hands and arms. “Please don’t use that moisturizer on your hands.” I asked “It was expensive and it’s meant for the face.” Suddenly, I felt and heard the jar whizz closely past my left ear, then smash into the door behind...