Bored Together, Bored Alone

Okay. Once again, I FORGOT to write in here late last night, by the midnight pacific time deadline. Woke up this morning and did some errands and had my coffee and prepared my teaching syllabus for college courses that start next week, and then, BAM!!! Out of nowhere, again, I suddenly remembered that I'm a widow who writes for "Widow's Voice." Oops. Seriously, how many freakin' times am I going to forget to write in here? You would think at some point, it would just become part of my overall being, and I would simply remember. You would think writing "WV" in big letters on my desk calendar, listed underneath Thursday evenings, would be a big enough hint for me to remember. You would think that the fact that I spend several hours a DAY, everyday, writing my book, which is about losing my husband to sudden death, would spark my memory that I have to write in here. You would be all kinds of wrong. I still forget. And it's been 3 years since he died, so I kind of think that using "widow brain" as an excuse at this point is a bit lame. At some point, I need to just own up to the fact that I'm a huge scatterbrain.

So here we are at 1pm eastern time on Friday, and I'm just now writing my piece. Sorry!!! I will say that my brain IS on overload this week and this month, because I've been spending a good part of the summer writing this book about this loss, and trying like hell to have it done and self-published by the end of this year, and it's been way more emotional writing and re-telling and re-living all of these stories and memories, than I ever thought it would be. Last night I cried so hard while writing the piece about the day I knew I was in love with my husband (before he was my husband, obviously.) So I'm very tired, and I also need to take breaks from all this writing. Not just because my fingers hurt after typing for hours on end, but because my body needs to get up and move and walk and go outside and talk about something besides loss and pain and death. So here we are at Labor Day weekend, upcoming holiday, gorgeous weather in NYC-area, and I really need to take a mini-vacation from all this writing, at least for a couple of days. The problem is, as soon as I made the decision to do that, I very quickly realized that I have zero plans and absolutely nothing to do.

I feel like I have spent so much time alone lately, which is okay, because I dont mind doing things alone. But there has to be a balance. I also need friends. I need company. I need to talk with people or just sit with people or connect with people. What I would love to do this weekend is sit with some friends by a pool somewhere, and just chill out, have some drinks, and jump in and swim and wade the weekend away. The problem is, I really dont have anyone to do those things with, which is odd, because I do have a lot of friends. However, it seems to me, that whenever I am feeling lonely and bored and it's a weekend or a holiday or both, all of my friends are somehow busy doing their own thing. "Their own thing" usually means hanging out with their significant other, or their own families, in the case of my many friends with kids. I do have some widowed friends, but none that live close enough to me that we can go away somewhere for a weekend together, or none that I feel close enough with to want to do those things. A lot of my widowed friends also have kids, so our lives are just very different sometimes. Then I have widowed friends AND single friends, who like the "singles" lifestyle. Hanging out at bars on weekends, loud clubs, drinking, trying to find dates or hook-ups. That is just not my thing. So lots of times, what Im left with, is myself. I don't mind speding time with myself, but it's getting a bit old. There are a lot of days I feel so lonely and so bored, and just don't know what to do about it. Then I remember the days of sitting around and being bored with my husband. How glorious and ordinary and wonderful that was, to be bored WITH someone else. To hang out together and do nothing all day long, and not care. Now, on days like today, I feel restless and depressed and sad. I miss my buddy. My friend. My person to sit around and do nothing with.

This sucks.