Why is everything so hard?  Do we make it that way, or is it just the way it is?  I honestly never felt so lost or lonely.  I’ve been angry some too, and since I’ve never been an angry person, it feels weird.  I’ve never thought of myself as a complicated person, but I feel complicated.  Like I don’t understand myself, like no one can possibly understand me, like the world is so confusing.  How can this world be so amazing and beautiful, yet so frightening and awful at the same time?

I’ve seen those who are moving on after a death, but I have a feeling they are just pretending.  Just like me.  I pretend all the damn time.  And honestly, the pretending works a lot of the time.  I pretend that things are okay, and they kind of are.  I pretend that I really love my new life, and I actually do.  I pretend that everything is fine; I’m fine.  I’m always fine because I’ve ALWAYS been just fine.  I was fine when my first husband cheated on me and left me with little kids.  I pretended it was okay, and we made it through.  Looking back, I know there are scars, and I would change what happened if I could, but I can’t.  I moved on, kept a smile on my face, stayed tough and did what I had to do.  It was awful, but I also knew that I’d get through it and find someone else to share my life at some point.  I was fine.

Then I did find someone else.  And it wasn’t easy–moving, changing careers, merging families, learning someone else’s life stories.  But there were great moments, and we pretended our way through the bad parts.  Then, there was cancer, and cancer became the only bad part that mattered.  All the other little problems were insignificant.  Everything else, even annoying issues that cropped up,  were actually kind of wonderful because they were real life, and we were facing them together.  Bobby and I became partners in every sense of the word.  We were actually fighting for his life together.  Cancer, as much as I hate it, made the rest of life kind of more…..just more.  We appreciated things more, especially the fact that we had found each other.

I think that’s why I feel so lost and confused now.  We fought and went through quite a bit to be together.  We were supposed to grow old together.  I was fighting cancer WITH him, so why am I still here, and he’s not?  I feel as if I went through everything that he did.  For years, we fought.  So now, sometimes I don’t know what I’m doing.  I don’t know what I’m fighting for any more.  Don’t feel sorry for me; I am just venting.  Many people have much tougher lives and things they deal with on a daily basis. I’m lucky.  Eventually I’m going to figure it out, but please be patient with me.  I’m getting a little impatient with myself right now.  I’m tired of feeling lost. I’m tired of being fine.  I’m tired of thinking about how things were supposed to be.  I know that “supposed to be” isn’t real, but I can’t seem to help myself.  I feel better sometimes–kind of as if I’ve found my center, and then BAM!  I’m back to square one.  It’s honestly starting to make me mad at myself that I can’t just “STOP IT!”

Tomorrow, it will have been one year since I heard my husband’s voice.  He died on October 16, 2017, but we went to the ER the night of October 12.  They had to put a ventilator in sometime in the early hours of Friday, October 13 because he was trying so hard to talk to me and breathe.  I honestly didn’t think he was going to die then.  He had been through so much and overcome.  I thought we would have a few more good years and a few more evenings watching television, walking the dog, days at the beach, or just laughing and talking.  Even that night, I really believed it was going to be okay as long as he was looking at me.  After they put the vent in, and he went to sleep, I started to realize the truth.  His poor body was too sick, so I had to figure out how to say goodbye over the next day or two.

One of the cornerstones of our relationship was laughter.  We laughed a lot about the most ridiculous things, and I miss it.  It’s not that I don’t laugh a lot these days because I do.  It seems that I’ve found more and more things that make me smile, and I do notice beauty around me so much more than I used to.  I take nothing for granted.  I stop and smell the roses.  But, I also feel old A LOT.  Often I feel that I have more in common with my 79 year old dad than I do with women my own age.  Losing my mom has been hard on my dad, and I don’t even really know how to help him because we can’t talk about it much.  I miss her so much too.  When we start to get emotional, we kind of retreat into our own spaces.  I have to keep being fine, so as not to fall completely apart.  He is sort of the same way.

Max may be the only one who really knows me these days.  Is it okay if your dog replaces your husband as your best friend???  That’s kind of where I am.  I can’t handle being around people for a super long time.  It truly wears me out.  I don’t remember ever being this way to such an extent before.  I’m still so tired.  Weary is a better word.  So if I don’t answer the phone or message, I promise it’s not because I don’t like you.  It’s just that I can’t handle talking to anyone but Max at that moment, and I might not even be talking to him.  He might be out barking at squirrels in his newly fenced back yard, or we might be riding around with the top down listing to the radio and pretending to be okay.  Or we could possibly be lying in bed knowing that tomorrow is another day to start again.