I haven’t posted since October 8th…Jason’s birthday. The reason why I stopped is…well…complicated. This past Fall/Winter/Holiday season was mentally and emotionally tumultuous (fun…using that word…I like it). I had a perfect storm of things going on: Levi at school, a new job, navigating newer friendships, struggling with old pain-filled relationships, the Holidays, not feeling well, etc. I was trying to stay upright under a load that felt way too heavy for my shoulders, living up in my head a lot, not sleeping, haunted by feelings of guilt, feeling like I was failing my kids and my husband and myself, wondering how I was going to keep on going like this for the rest of my life. I was not in a good place, so I got quiet.
Don’t get me wrong, there were some good times thrown in there. In October, a friend and I joined a Learn to Curl league. That was super fun. You may be watching curling in the Olympics right now…it is challenging and, dare I say, kinda badass! In November, I went on a cabin trip with a friend. One of the highlights of that trip was seeing an owl on our walk back to the cabin from the bathrooms. It just sat on a branch and let us admire it. So cool! In December, I spent a night with some of Jason’s sisters. We VRBO’d a place in Hudson, WI thinking we would spend the evening exploring Downtown. The weather didn’t cooperate with that plan so we ended up staying in. It was the absolute BEST. Laughter, tears, and a fair amount of blackberry Jack Daniels. In January, the kids and I went to an escape room and out to dinner. We also spent many, many hours around the Holidays together….watching movies, playing games, laughing, sometimes crying—at least I did.
But I could feel myself….sinking, sinking, sinking. I started cancelling plans with friends because I couldn’t bear the thought of dragging myself out of the house and pretending I was fine…or attempting to even talk about what was happening with me. My writing dried up for awhile. I felt like I had nothing to say of value. That people were probably sick of listening to me whine. I felt like I was becoming so careful in my words on my blog because I didn’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings, that my voice had become muted. My writing wasn’t helping me process anymore, it had just become another place where I wasn’t good enough. The dark and cold of winter kept me in my house and out of the healing arms of Nature. I was spending a lot of time scrolling, scrolling, scrolling on my phone and soon I was adding the fear and pain of ICE-terrorized Minneapolis on my shoulders.
I felt like I was living my life in…what I call…”the spins”…where I can’t get my brain to shut off and it obsesses over the same things over and over again…spinning them around and around and around and around…looking at them from different angles…trying to fix them through various scenarios. My brain filling in the missing pieces of the situation…like what other people are thinking or feeling…until the story in my head is complete…but probably not completely accurate. And then I become “untethered” and lose my grip on reality because I’m living like the story is true…completely ignoring the fact that parts of it are completely made up by my brain. This is not a new thing for me, I just used to have a live-in reality check.
And here’s where I, once again, stress the importance of having a good therapist. My hours with her were spent unraveling “the spins”…verbalizing hurt that goes back years in many cases…examining motivations behind things I keep on doing that are detrimental to my mental and emotional health. She kept asking “why” and I kept saying…because my kids…because Jason would want…because it feels selfish not to…because I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings… And finally, she looked at me and said, “If you are doing things that cause you pain and don’t fill your cup in some way, you need to give yourself permission to stop doing them. That is called self-care, not being selfish”.
We also talked a lot about my Mama Bear and how hard it is to have adult children. She makes choices that sacrifice her own well-being time and time again because she thinks what she is doing is for the good of her kids. She wants to growl and snap at anyone who she thinks might pose a danger to them. In her mind, they have gone through enough pain and loss in their lives and must be protected from further trauma. She failed at protecting them before, and she will not fail them again. All well and good when her children were, well, children…but now they are adults…and she is learning to stand by and pace while they make their own choices. This is especially hard when it concerns relationships with other people. When she’s standing at the door as they leave saying, “Have a good time!” while in her mind she is sharpening her claws.
And we talked a lot about Jason. When he was sick we spoke very little about what would happen after he was gone. People sometimes ask me if he “gave me permission” to find someone else. It was never even a topic of conversation. I think because the idea of someone else for either of us is just inconceivable. I still feel married–still wear my rings and don’t see a time when I would change my mind about that. We didn’t talk about finances at all. I had no idea if the kids and I would be okay or if we would be living in a van down by the river. I remember trying to bring it up with him a few times but he was unable to wrap his brain around that conversation, so I pushed that stress aside as much as I could. He also didn’t seem to be at all concerned about how the kids and I would survive without him. I remember breaking down about that on more than one occasion and his confidence that I could do it, with the help of our support system, was unflappable.
And then he died. I still have a husband, he just isn’t here. We’re not living in a van down by the river. The kids are doing awesome…and I’m, well, I’m not awesome, but as I told my sister the other day “my life doesn’t feel like total shit right now, so I guess that’s good”. I’ve been working on self-care a lot….turns out it involves way more than taking a bath and lighting a candle. I went to the doctor for the first time in 18 years. Found out that I will ugly cry at the littlest thing in the doctor’s office, so that was real fun. But I managed to get a clean bill of health and even had my first mammogram. My body didn’t know what to do with all that attention…lol. I started walking on my treadmill and eating healthier. I’ve been writing most mornings again. I needed something to fill my evenings, so I started playing guitar. Which I absolutely love. I’m so excited to be able to take my guitar with me wherever I go…guitar by the campfire is in my future for sure.
And I look at my life…and the lives of our kids…and sometimes it is hard not to feel guilt over the pieces of it that I know are not what Jason was confident they would be…but I also know that my happiness and the happiness of our children are always the most important things to him. And then I feel PROUD. And it feels weird to say that. I used to think that the past 4 years has changed me as a person so completely that I would wonder if I was even somebody Jason could love anymore. I’m starting to realize that the core he fell in love with has stayed the same…some aspects of ME are just more accentuated…or more muted. I think that what has changed drastically is my worldview and the ways I choose to interact with that world and the people in it. And I think that links to the self-care I was talking about earlier. My peace, my joy, my happiness, my sense of self-worth, my confidence, my purpose are all very, very hard-fought. I fight a battle daily for each one of those things…some days I’m more successful than others. And there’s nobody here to protect them…except for me.
And now I’m going to wrap up this obscenely long blog post that took me all week to write. Take care of yourselves!
Love, Tennis, and Cancer 