Year Two-  1-2/52

I am two weeks into my second year of this thing called widowhood.

And I am tired.  Physically.  Mentally.  Emotionally.

I am tired of the pity.

I am tired of being patronized.

I am tired of being told I am strong.  As if I really had a choice.

I am tired of being a sole parent.

I am tired of being told how to grieve.

I am tired of trying to stay positive.

I am tired of looking into my future and seeing nothingness.  I miss having long term plans, goals and dreams.  I have none of that now.

I am tired of pretending that I am somewhat okay with what happened.

I am tired of people not understanding that I just need to be sad.  There is nothing wrong with me.  If you lost your spouse, you would feel sad too.

I am tired of being sad and lonely.  Because as much as I love my Albany Family and my biological family, there is a loneliness that no one can remedy.  No one knew me like Bryon did.  There is that stuff that only someone intimate with you would know.  I think back to my frustrated days as a single before meeting Bryon, but I wasn’t as lonely as I was now because I didn’t know that closeness even existed.

I miss being married.  But I don’t want to date.  At all.  In fact, I am angry that I am this position.  This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.  We were happy.  Now I am the third, fifth, seventh, ninth, eleventh, etc wheel.  It sucks.  But I don’t want to date.  I want Bryon back. I want to be living the life I was supposed to be living.   But the reality is that someday I will have to because I have long life genes.  My Grandma Sullivan lived to be 90 and my Nana Crowley is still alive at the age of 95.  It is not unreasonable to think I may live that long and I know I don’t want to be alone for another 60+ years.  Being alone and dating are equally dreadful to me.

I also truly doubt I will ever find anyone who captivates me the way Bryon did.  Or even if I found someone who captivates me, I doubt I would captivate them.  As each day goes on, I am convinced more and more that you only get one and I had mine.  And it’s over.  

During year one I bounced between feeling raw grief and an almost Zen-like state.  But now I just feel blah.  Grief is no longer raw and being Zen is just too much work.  I am too drained to do anything.  I know that this is supposed to be the year that I put myself first, but even that seems like too much work.  

They say year two is the year we are supposed to leave again, but currently I feel so uninspired.