What’s Actually In The Mirror?

Post 16. Self reflection? Self explanation? Mom said there’d be days, right?

My friends. My family. I don’t know about you… but I’m struggling. Everywhere I turn I’m struggling. I cannot find solace. I pray. I pray more. I try to be busy. I try to rest. I try to be with a few people. I stay connected with close friends. I try to interact daily… like I’m on the same page with everyone. But I’m not and the harder I try the worse the aftermath becomes. This race is brand new and it’s soooo old already. Little things are big things. Big things are earth shattering. It shouldn’t be that way… my mind can rationalize that much. But my heart and emotions cannot. I am not to the place yet that life can proceed. Life is moving like an Amtrak train. I’m the snail underneath the track shrieking in my shell. Noone can really understand. My friend who lost her beloved one month earlier can but us trying to help one another is just the same as two blind puppies trying to help each other out of the thicket. We share our pain. It is the same. But there is no resolution to it. We have no answers. We’re lost in a thorny, dark hollow….and there is nothing but shredded skin where we try to place armor. There are barbs that catch us when we’re not looking. When we least expect them they snag us and tear another part of us away. Bandaids are useless at this point. What even is a bandaid for this? Dinner with people? We try. Meditation? Housework? We try. Tattoos? The outward expression of an inward pain. We try anything we can. If you have tattoos you understand the pleasure in the pain of getting it. If you don’t, explaining the ‘healing properties’ / therapy of it is a futile effort. But if someone can define it for me to share! Please… let me know!! I can’t even think how she works right now but she’s in a special circumstance that allows her protection when she needs it. I know she’s grateful for that. But these are all just temporary things that flood us with even more incomprehensible emotion. Like… “the last time we were together…Todd was here”… or… we are going home to the cold side of the bed to look at. The gesture means the world to us. But try to understand that it is not you… it’s the demons we fight daily. We envy your life right now. The only thing we want will never, ever be. The reality hits us all the time. All. The. Time. Our futures were decimated. Demolished. We were too young for this. This wasn’t supposed to be how it was supposed to go! We had plans! We were going to do things! When is that timeline supposed to make sense again?? Should it have been by now? Should we have been able to reroute by now? It’s OVER. The plans are over. Its just now hitting us. We’re just now starting to comprehend that there isn’t a tomorrow in sight that we were going to be ready for. It’s a fight daily to get your feet out of that bed on to the floor. We deal with pain that is indefinable. I have chest pains and pains in random places I’ve never experienced before. I have panic and anxiety I’ve never known or understood before. I get hives. I take medication to control things that are uncontrollable. I eat to find my guts hurt and rebel. I cannot conceive drinking wine. ( I know! If you know me….😳). I tried. The panic and anxiety won’t stomach that either. I write to escape this torture. I watch ridiculous shows to pass my mind. It always is there and you’re still left with a racing mind rarely understanding what you just watched. I miss his words. I miss his peace. I miss the ease of him. I miss his arms. I miss his face. I miss reaching over as he’s driving and feeling his forearm… right there at the bend of his elbow. He was so crazy strong. I miss his long legs on our long trips. He always drove. I think he liked it that way. Plus he didn’t like me to tailgate and don’t we all tailgate down here? I didn’t like him to tell me about it so it just worked out best that way. He had some road rage issues with the passing lane… I didn’t try to do much side seat driving- it was just kinda funny to watch him Nascar his way through the slow lane to teach some fifo( his word) how to use it 🤣 You cannot begin to imagine how just…cool… I thought he was. I don’t think the ‘crushing’ on him would ever have stopped. I remember not too long ago… this past winter we drove separately back from the lake. I was ahead because he stopped to get fuel. So I had that much lead on him. It was snowy and I am cautious driving in snow & rain. After a while, here he came passing me in that badass Duramax… one hand on the wheel & the other on the phone. It was a Monday so the next 10 hours would be spent checking his farmers, getting trucks to haul cattle he’d bought, telling a man if he should bring his cows to the sale this week or if he felt the market would do better for them the next week. I fell in behind him and did my best to keep up. I can still feel my heart beat as I watched him… be him. For the next hour and a half I followed the biggest crush of my life 😀 and I couldn’t believe I had gotten to marry him. That is a true story. No embellishing.

Why wouldn’t this be the next hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life? Why wouldn’t this be the biggest tragedy for so many? Why wouldn’t this take too much time to recover? He . Was. It. He carried so many of us to joy. He was joy. He taught so many of us giving. He taught me grace. He brought to me and out of me a part of myself that I liked. Because he shared it. I had never known anyone who shared so many parts of ME. He loved those parts that not many other people had. We cultivated them in one another. We nurtured them and together we could see the fruits between us flourish that had never been in the right soil before. It was so fun and rewarding to talk about together and to recognize in each other. It became our life. OUR WAY. And it was something that only we could understand. And it was so beautiful to share a love of giving and sharing and just plain & simple JOY. I miss that the most. The unspoken joy. I miss that half of me that is gone from this place anyway. But forever with me, I know. Lindaaaaaaa… thaaats how we do it.

I could not have prepared for this. I’ve said before that something in my soul knew. And the rest of me beat that part of my soul up anytime it tried to speak. There is nothing on earth that could have prepared me. And there also was nothing on earth that could have stopped me from taking every egg I had and throwing them all at once into his basket. Done. It was a sealed deal. Forever. & ever. Amen. I would do it again every day…and yep, twice on Sunday.

But here I am. No eggs. No basket. No prince. No black, shining Duramax. I am not ok. I don’t know when I will be. I know I will. I guess I am writing this because I feel that have to make excuses. I have to apologize. I have to have extraordinary reasons for everything right now when really… I just want to wear my long black veil of pure understanding… disallowing any need or requirement of an explanation. I want people to understand that I am not ready. I am not where maybe you think I am. Or where some may think I should be. Its not the flu. It’s not chicken pox. It’s not a cold. It does not have an estimated duration. It won’t just be gone one day and I’ll be back on the playground as usual. I thought I was going to have some expert knowledge on grief because I navigated the worst kind there is… but, there is no grace in grief. There is no sympathy from this hard lesson. I didn’t get a pass. I didn’t get to test out. I got from grief 101… to grief 4001. It’s the same content with credit from your intro to but instead of a better understanding… NO… it just became more complex. Like getting a Masters. I’m not sure it comes with a better prize though.

Maybe you need to get off the Merry go round a minute? Do we really need to fumble around with reasons? Excuses? Isn’t preserving what we have achieved to now worth preserving? Getting off and sitting on the bench while everyone else keeps going… is alright. It might be necessary. If you are unavailable. You are unavailable. It is not your requirement to justify the bleeding that has not ceased. This is your soul. As you stupidly and ignorantly cradle it in your hands trying not to break what you’ve salvaged of it… do you really need another reason to protect it? You would not expect a fragile infant to weather itself from a storm. This. Is. Your. Broken. Hearted. Soul. Tend it. Only you can. And a few who are willing to go in that deep water with you without a thought. Tend to it. Protect it. Give YOURSELF time. Maybe we…… maybe WE ……. are the biggest critics. Without a doubt-it is us that places the most pressure. So in reference to the….”theys” & “thems” formerly, perhaps I am projecting outwardly onto others what I myself have been guiltiest of all along.

Take a look… mirror,mirror on the wall, what am I responsible for after all?

Be easy with yourself my friends. Thank you for coming with me today. With love. Peace be with you. JHW+🖤