31 January 2011

The brick


This is the memorial brick in the pathway at the Garden of Hope in the Huntsville Botanical Garden.  Laura, Karen and I went and saw it on Saturday.  I think it's just right.

30 January 2011

Quick late-night hello

I'm just back from Alabama.  Friday had started out not much better than Thursday had ended - first day I've had a hard time holding it together at work at the start of the day, leading my boss to tell me I wasn't my "usual bubbly self" (first time in my entire life anyone has ever called me "bubbly" - definitely not an adjective I would have thought to apply, ever, before) and a few others to comment that I looked tired, which I was, having stayed up way too late doing last-minute packing for my trip.  By Friday afternoon, though, I had done a little analyzing and come up with a reason for my sudden mood swing Thursday: a coworker had brought her new-born son into the office that afternoon, and while the sight of a baby has never once inspired in me the thought "Wish I had one," I can only guess that hearing about the woman's plans, all the new beginnings and happiness and decisions, and watching everyone coo over the baby, just made me feel so old and over with.  I know it's not true, I know there will be good things in my life, new things even, new joys someday, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's what set me off.

Anyway, I need to make definite tracks towards bed, since I'm already going to get way too little sleep before I have to get up for work tomorrow (and my insides are not 100% happy - not sure if it was the sudden onslaught of Southern cooking in large quantities, the fact that I accidentally ate some chicken casserole at the potluck at today's singing - thought it was squash or potato casserole until it was already in my mouth - and I haven't eaten any meat in years - or possibly the Diet Dr. Pepper float from Sonic I got when Laura and I stopped on the way back to BNA - or a combination of all of the above).  But I just wanted to check in and let all y'all know I'm feeling better than I was when I last wrote here.  And to thank you for being there... again.

27 January 2011

Tired

I just want to say that I've had enough of this widowhood shit and I want Jerry to come home.  Now.

Nothing like a quick blast-from-the-past-summer emotional wave to make me appreciate even more tomorrow's trip to Alabama.  Which is coming just in time.  I know this will pass, I know things are better than they were, I know they'll be better still in the future, I know, to quote Jennifer and Kristian, "It'll be all right again."  But I'm so tired of sadness.  I'm tired of land mines.  I'm tired of being lonely, I'm tired of being celibate for a year, I'm tired of not having someone to hold me, I'm tired of imagining someone holding me who isn't going to... someones both living and dead.  I'm tired of winter.  I'm tired of grey skies, of snow, of cold, of the car covered in road salt, of winter layers, of the woolen sweaters the moths are riddling with holes in my wardrobe.  I'm tired of coming closer to 50 and feeling old and worn out and, to use a phrase that popped into my head on the drive home, "past my sell date."  I'm tired of being in this house alone, full of reminders, full of so much stuff to go through and sort and figure out.  I'm tired of working so hard to live the semblance of a normal life, when I feel like a person apart, even more so than I already always did, a person so scarred and bizarre and different and crushed that no one is ever going to want to be that someone to hold me, ever.

And I hate it that Jerry Enright is dead.  I just hate it.

24 January 2011

"Loneliness is a very lousy case"

I cry so infrequently these days.  Sometimes I wish I'd cry more often - it would, I don't know, make me feel more "normal"?  I worry so often that I've swung too far in the opposite direction from where I was this past summer, and done it too fast, too soon (although God knows it didn't feel fast or soon through that summer of hell, and if I had the stomach right now for reading back over the earliest entries in this blog, I'd probably not worry about these things and just be glad for not being back in that place, no matter how artificial - or not - this new place is).

So let's see, how incoherent was that first paragraph?

Anyway, my point tonight is that it's been a less happy couple of days - sometimes the loneliness is worse, sometimes my grasping of the fact that Jerry is dead is less certain.  I also notice that my dreams are reflecting way more anxiety than I'm aware of when I'm awake.  I don't always remember them, but I do remember the mood, and I do remember that Jerry is in the dreams but I'm not with him - in some of these dreams I'm even with someone else, giving in to someone else's attentions, while not necessarily choosing to of my own free will, knowing Jerry is somewhere but unable to stop myself.  Obvious much?  I don't think we need lots of analysis to know that my desire to have love in my life again someday, my loneliness for physical affection and contact, and the fact that I've started to notice men again (as opposed to the months after Jerry died, when I could not even imagine ever finding any other man attractive ever again) are all bringing up anxieties and guilt and fear - not when I'm awake, or not that I'm aware of when I'm awake, but sure enough it's coming out when I'm asleep.

I watched a bit of the movie Bounce yesterday: Jerry and I had watched it together years ago, and I know I've seen it more than once.  Gwyneth Paltrow plays Abby, the widow of a man who's died in a plane crash, and without going into lots of details about the plot, there's a point in the movie where she takes some tentative steps towards her first relationship since his death - and freaks out about it, for various plot reasons, and just because.  And then she has this exchange with another character:


Abby: Being with him is like making a choice.
Donna: You don't have that choice, Abby. You have other choices.
Abby: It just can't be him - that's all.
Donna: Ok, then fine. But whether it's Buddy or someone else a year from now, whoever you choose will be there because Greg is not. That's just how it is.

One of those times when you hear just what you need to hear.  Not that there's a Buddy, or an anyone else, in prospect at the moment.   But the thing is... I wish there were.  (Honest but vague disclosure: I've started having crushes.  In some ways it's nice, it's good.  In some ways it freaks me out because it makes me feel like I'm 13 years old again.  And in some ways it's just depressing, because I wasn't supposed to have to start over, I had found my Mr. Right, and why the hell should I be having to deal with feeling like a 13-year-old again at the age of 48!?!?!?!  And mainly depressing because after 12 years of requited, going back to unrequited is just not fun.)  And my subconscious can yell at me about it all it wants, but whoever is there someday, if he ever is, will be there because Jerry is not.  My subconscious can want me to stay true to Jerry all it wants, and if I had that option, if Jerry were here to be true to, I would be, as I always was, as I never had any thought not to be, because I loved him with all my heart.  But now I've had to receive most of that heart back again - not whole, not ever whole again, but most of it is now back in my keeping, and it's lonely.  And my subconscious can give me all the bad dreams it wants - it won't change the reality of my life now.  And the absence of Jerry.

(Wow.  I know I've been low on the anger part of the grieving process, but I didn't expect to find some of it aimed at my subconscious.  I need to give it a break - it's only reflecting what's there inside my head,  possibly dampened or hidden by Prozac and the desire to feel better and the determination to feel better.  But I don't want to feel guilty or wrong.  And I want to be happy.  And I want to be held.)

Anyway, I did manage some tears yesterday, brought on by a partial umpteenth viewing of Serenity.  If you've seen Serenity, you can guess what brought it on, or one of the scenes, anyway.  If you haven't - put it on your list, but don't watch it until after you've watched Firefly.

So... anyway... lonely.  Missing Jerry.  Wanting someone.  A whirl of emotions.  As usual.

(Extra credit to those of you who know the movie the line I've titled this post with comes from.)






23 January 2011

1998

The movie You've Got Mail is one that I watch at least some part of most times I see it listed on TV, even though I own a copy of it (on VCR tape) that I hardly ever think about watching and even though it's only a so-so movie, with lots of lines that make me cringe in their clunkiness, and it pales so much in comparison with the movie it's a remake of, the exquisite Shop Around the Corner.   However... it will always have a place in my heart, because at the time it was being filmed on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, I lived exactly there, and I remember standing on a street corner on Broadway watching Meg Ryan and Nora Ephron and a huge amount of crew and equipment taking over a Starbucks.  (Grammar Nerd Aside: why is there no apostrophe in that name?)  When I watch the movie, I see a snapshot of that time in my life (although the movie makes the neighborhood look as idealized as any small town in a movie), recognize corners and restaurants and shops, know where things were created just for the movie (neither bookstore in the movie was really there, for instance).

And what I notice now, watching bits of the movie again, is that suddenly the year 1998, when the movie came out and when I met Jerry, the year before I put my apartment on West 73rd Street at Amsterdam Avenue on the market and moved to Illinois, feels like a long time ago.  I mean, it was: 12 years is a quarter of my life.  But it also feels like a long time ago in terms of who I was then, and who I've been over those 12 years and all I've experienced in that time, and who I am now.  (Hell, June of last year, as I keep saying, feels like a million years ago in terms of who I was then and who I am now.)

Nothing profound about this realization (and hard to write coherently when I'm half-listening to the dialogue of the movie).  Just... a realization.  My life in New York now seems as unreal as the Upper West Side of You've Got Mail does.  And it is, indeed, just as long ago.

Current life developments:  I've lost a couple of pounds (ten pounds to unrealistic goal, six pounds to realistic goal), and I've worked out three times since Tuesday.  Had a haircut yesterday, and, oh, yeah, a year and a half after I had problems with the reading part of my progressive trifocal glasses and decided, in a burst of sheer brilliance, or sheer something, that my eyes must have been improving and I must not have needed glasses at all (because I seemed to read better without the lenses), I had an eye exam and found out, no, I do need glasses... just a stronger prescription in the reading part.  I can still drive without glasses, but things are clearer with glasses again, and reading is now so much easier now that I have the right prescription.

15 January 2011

New ink




Mike at Fox Valley Tattoo, who did the tattoo of Jerry's signature in June, did this tattoo for me this evening.  I love it.  It's on my left wrist.  As I wrote on Facebook: Heart with wings, symbolizing the unexpected, surprising healing of my own heart. It will never be entirely whole, missing the part that Jerry took with him - but I have found strength and healing when I never imagined I ever would.

And that's what this tattoo means.  I know one meaning of heart-with-wings tattoos is memorial, but that's not what this one is about - that's what the signature is.  This one is about me.  This one is about becoming someone I never thought I would.  This is about who I want to be, what I want to have in my life.

(I do forgive and understand the person who, when I mentioned that I was going to get a new tattoo, asked "Auburn Tigers, right?"  Yeah, I've become a rabid member of the Auburn Family, definitely All In, thrilled to pieces about their victory over Oregon on Monday - but no, I'm not ready to tattoo that rabidity on my body.  And I forgive those of you who just thought "...yet.")

I did wait an extra week from the time I decided to do it, to try to suss out whether or not a heart-with-wings tattoo wasn't a bit too much of a result of my recent Sugarland obsession - but a week later I still wanted it.  I looked at a lot of ideas online, and finally came across this, which jumped out at me and said "I'm the one you're looking for."  I brought a printout of the design in this afternoon and discussed it with Mike, and we agreed the wings would be filled in in black.  So this evening when he was done with other customers I went back and he drew the design and then turned it into a stencil and then inked it, and I'm just thrilled with the end result.

Made it through another month since Jerry's death.  I was surprising myself again, this time by not being sure how many months it had been on Thursday when the 13th rolled around.  I counted, on my fingers no less, several times to come up with the number seven, certain it must be eight, but no, it's only been seven months.  And already I'm such a different person.  And that's a good thing.

Another thing I haven't put down here before, but I think I need to: last week when Lynne and Bill were here, I took the chain with Jerry's wedding ring on it off when I made a stab at following the Zumba DVD Lynne brought with her... and then I didn't put it back on again.  I felt very strongly that I didn't want to.  It was the same odd feeling I had when I didn't put my own wedding ring back on.  Guilt, but also a feeling that doing it would be doing something that wasn't appropriate anymore, something that wasn't right for me... something more for appearances, for other people, to make sure they thought I was still grieving "properly," the way I "should."  As if I were afraid they'd think I was "over it," that I'd moved on - I'll bet this is the same thing I wrote about my ring.  That if people didn't see those rings on my body somewhere, they'd think I wasn't, I don't know, sad enough anymore.  That I didn't love Jerry enough.  That I don't love him anymore.

And I decided I needed to do what matters to me, and stop worrying what other people think.  I know now something I didn't know before.  If I'm ever lucky enough to find love again, it won't change how I felt about Jerry, and how I feel about him now, and how I'll always feel about him.  And if I'm lucky enough someday that another Mr. Right comes along, my love for Jerry is going to be okay with him - that'll be part of his Rightness.  I know this now.  And I know that my heart is strong, and getting stronger, and healing.

And that's what the tattoo is about.

05 January 2011

All in

Karen and Lynne get a head start on showing Tiger Spirit, January 2011 (not entirely visible in the photo: a pair of Tibetan bead earrings Jerry gave me years ago... large orange amber beads with smaller navy blue beads... as Karen said, he knew!).

Quick note

Hey y'all - sorry I've been quiet, especially for those of you I don't communicate with in other ways.  Life mostly takes over the time I used to have to write here, either with occupation or by wearing me out so much I don't have the energy when I might have the time.  It's been sort of a rough ride these past days - I did have the pleasure of Lynne and Bill's visit for New Year's weekend, and I've enjoyed watching bits and pieces of the 143 Bowl games (not 143?  Are you sure?).  But there's been a lot of emotional dips in the past few days, abetted by some physical wear and tear and insomnia and some bad reactions to some medication, all of it building up to the point where I drove home on I-90 this evening in tears.  Which is probably a good thing, as I seem to say every time I get through a crying spell these days - they come much less frequently now than they did, and I sometimes worry that things are getting bottled up or hidden too deep.  So it's good that it can come out and pass for a spell.  It just would be more convenient if it didn't happen while I was driving at night on an Interstate, going 70 in a 55 zone to keep up with traffic.

Four days and a wake-up until the BCS Final!  Lynne will be back for a quick overnight stop on her way back east from California, and we'll cheer on the Tigers together, both sorry we can't be in Glendale or in Alabama to watch the game.

Must go to bed - the insomnia's been pretty bad the past few nights, sprinkled with some nightmares about Jerry dying and me being kept from seeing him.  Days and nights both giving me some trouble at the moment.  On the plus side, going back to work after a 5-day break at New Year's was actually a good thing (except - always except - for the commute).  It's good to be busy and good to be out of the house and seeing people.

Good night for now.