Saturday, January 11, 2014

The Blindside


I've been in a clay workshop for the past few days, and its mostly been a heck of a lotta fun. Each say we have worked with a different teacher, making sculptures, dinnerware, decorated tiles, and learning alternative techniques for firing clay (examples in the picture above!) It's been a whirlwind of new and exciting creative ideas for me, especially since I haven't actually worked with clay since I took a ceramics class back in college about eight years ago. Making things has been one of the most powerful ways for me to cope with my emotions since my fiance died. I was excited to start off a new year with something healing and grounding.  

Of course as happens sometimes when I take the chance to insert myself back into the world of the living, I was slapped in the face rudely with my reality, and the fact that other people have a different reality... The one I wanted to have.  Over lunch at the workshop, while sitting outside on the porch enjoying the beautiful warm weather we have in Texas this week, all the women around me started to talk about their husbands. And worse than talk... Brag. About how they fix things around the house, and cook dinners, and help with the wives' businesses. Then one of the women my age, around her early 30's, introduces her husband who happens to be dropping off these mountainous apple pies that he made from scratch and delivered to us for dinner tonight. Aaaand that did it. Cue the breakdown. 

It's quite amazing... In about three minutes they managed to reduce me from joyful and content to slinking away and finding a place to cry my eyes out. And just like that I realized - at a year and a half - I'm still not quite so good at being out in the world of the living yet.  

Aside from our friends and family, I have kept to myself a lot since he died. I have felt too vulnerable, too raw, too different to really be out in the world a lot... But I have gotten much better at it in the past few months. His death is no longer the thing I have to tell everyone. Instead, it is something I feel okay with not saying right away. I suppose this means some healing has happened.  

Today though, I was taken by surprise. Accidentally alienated. It's something I'm used to... I've spent years learning how to pause and choose how I will feel when others my age talk about their parents in front of me. Years learning how to not let my mind go to that place where I feel alienated, alone and like I have no parents. I do, even if they are dead, I still have them. The logical part of me says that I should have been able to stop and choose today in the same way about Drew when all those wives were going on.  

But my heart knows there was no graceful way out of the lunch debacle today. I am not healed enough that I can make that kind of rational choice yet... Not about him. Not when I am surrounded on all sides by happy women talking about their happy husbands.  

Sometimes I just have to fall in the pit and cry my heart out as I claw my way back out. Sometimes it can't be avoided - when people remind me so clearly of the life that I wanted to be having right now. To even have been able to call him my husband in the first place. To have begun a family. Some days, there will just need to be tears. That was today... and then I dried them, stood up tall, and walked back into the fire to finish my class. 

10 comments:

  1. Hi Sarah, I don't normally post comments but when I made my weekly visit to Widow's Voice and saw first your picture of pottery and then read your entry, I had to write. I have been widowed two years and 12 days - yeah, my husband died on New Year's Eve so it is too easy for me to count the numbers. Fourteen months after he died, I started taking a pottery class which has been very healing. It was only this month that I shared my story with my instructor and another student. It's a hard thing to share with people who didn't know you before. It is so essential to who I am yet I don't want to be totally defined by widowhood. I empathize with you finding yourself in a situation that reinforced your changed circumstances. I hope writing about it and sharing it helped a little - I know it helped me to read your entry. Keep up the good work.

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    1. Thank you so much. You're so right, working with clay has been so healing for me as well. I'm eventually hoping to start running my own art workshops for those who are grieving. And yes, sharing it, and reading some of the comments, really did help. So thank you!

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  2. I can relate. I spent yesterday with new friends, single friends, who gave me a glimpse of what life is like on your own and in all honesty the picture they painted was rather nice. While I was around them I had this sense of comfort and I could hear myself saying- if they can do it I can. I left their company feeling confident and that's when I made the mistake of visiting my cousin who is a new mom.
    I was married 4 years before I entered this lonely world. Having found our footing in our jobs my husband and I were talking about starting a family of our own. I was looking forward to parenthood.
    Seeing the proud parents standing at the crib looking at the baby was just so incredibly painful. I hate that I see my sorrow in their joy and I hate that I cannot have those things that I so so so wanted with my love. I rushed out in a hurry and cried my heart out the minute I reached home. I am discovering that my heart needs to break on all the dreams I had so I can heal and accept. Feeling my pain is a process I have to endure.
    Sarah, I believe we will be ready for the world and I pray that we will be able to partake in those conversations.. Someday.. Perhaps.

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    1. "My heart needs to break on all the dreams I had so I can heal and accept" - you are so right about that… I definitely have some more breaking to do. But you are right, we will be ready for the world, little by little, as we break and heal. Thank you for your comment!

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  3. I can relate. I spent yesterday with new friends, single friends, who gave me a glimpse of what life is like on your own and in all honesty the picture they painted was rather nice. While I was around them I had this sense of comfort and I could hear myself saying- if they can do it I can. I left their company feeling confident and that's when I made the mistake of visiting my cousin who is a new mom.
    I was married 4 years before I entered this lonely world. Having found our footing in our jobs my husband and I were talking about starting a family of our own. I was looking forward to parenthood.
    Seeing the proud parents standing at the crib looking at the baby was just so incredibly painful. I hate that I see my sorrow in their joy and I hate that I cannot have those things that I so so so wanted with my love. I rushed out in a hurry and cried my heart out the minute I reached home. I am discovering that my heart needs to break on all the dreams I had so I can heal and accept. Feeling my pain is a process I have to endure.
    Sarah, I believe we will be ready for the world and I pray that we will be able to partake in those conversations.. Someday.. Perhaps.

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  4. Oh Sarah ... why is it that I always seem to be writing about or feeling something similar to you, at the same time as you, lately? Very odd. Last night I wrote a piece for my book (havent decided yet if Im putting it in the blog or waiting to put it in the book only), and it was about how , lately, its the "happy married couples" that make me so so so sad. And Ive had a few instances in the past couple weeks just like this one, where I was going about my day and "getting out there" doing something, and then was blindsided by the tiny pieces of someone elses relationship that I will never get to have. Uuuuughhhhh .... Im feeling so lost today, and yet, I have to go out there in the world again, with people, and run a huge acting audition for this play Im directing. Let me just say again ..... UUUUGGHHH!!!! And also, I love you.....

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  5. I've found the thing that makes me feel the worst is when my female co-workers all complain or whine about their husbands over stupid stuff, such as leaving the lid up on the toilet, or not picking up milk at the grocery store, or spending money on golf clubs or country club memberships. I just want to scream at them "WELL YOU AT LEAST HAVE A HUSBAND! MINE DIED BECAUSE THE DOCTOR DIDN'T PICK UP ON THE FACT THAT HE HAD A BLOOD CLOT. MY HUSBAND WAS TOLD HE "WAS FINE" AND LESS THAN 24 HOURS HE WAS DEAD FROM A PULMONARY EMBOLISM."

    These are the same co-workers who came to the funeral and sent donations to my daughter's scholarship fund and see me struggling each day just to get through. But unless you've been through what we are going through, you just don't get it.

    Thanks for writing.

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    1. Oh boy, do i ever get that! I have a close friend is always complaining about stupid trivial shit like how messy her husband is or how much he works and how she only gets like THREE hours with him a day. I want to smack her and say "do you hear yourself? Do you see who you are saying it to?!" Some people truly just are not mindful enough to know what they're doing I suppose. Thanks so much for the comment Leslie, and I am SO very sorry for your loss <3

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  6. Sarah, Thank you so much for your reply - you don't know how much it means to me! Here I am, at 6:36 am, reading back what I wrote the other night and I'm thinking "Gee, I sound like a witch! And what's with all the caps?!"

    And then I see your reply, and I feel better! And I also want to thank you for your blog entries in "Widow's Voice". Your writing is beautiful but I can feel the pain as well. I'm sorry for your loss. I see that you live in Texas, I'm in Little Rock, Arkansas. I hope someday that the South will have one of the Widow's Retreats as well.

    Thanks again and I hope you have a good day.

    Leslie

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    1. Haha Leslie I don't think any of us ever sound like witches to each other! lol! You are so welcome, and thank you for reading and for your kind words about my writing.

      It would be so great to have a Camp Widow closer to us wouldn't it. I just purchased my tickets for the Tampa one, but phew it is putting me back a lot of money so I hope for a closer one in coming years for us!

      Take care Leslie,
      Sarah

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