Today wasn’t my best day, but it was far from my worst. If I have good enough fortune to be able to honestly say that more days than not, I’ll be in a pretty good place.
I took the opportunity to get some work projects that I’ve been putting off wrapped up, because I had the space in today’s schedule. That was great! I did my laundry, packed for my weekend trip, and just generally puttered around a bit.
This afternoon was pretty depressing, but it only lasted for a few hours. If I haven’t said this in a few days, I really miss Kellie. I don’t think I’ll ever stop, and I don’t want to. I miss her when I wake up in the middle of the night and roll over to pat her on the leg (before I remember that she’s not here). I miss her when I’m making eggs for breakfast and fix them exactly the way she loved, but when I bring them to her seat at the table it’s empty (because she’s not here). She should be here, and she’s not. Sometimes the weight of that is bearable and I get the idea in my head that I can handle this long-term, I can make it, I can be okay. But then that moment passes and the weight settles back onto my shoulders again, and I’m back to not knowing how to survive this state of being.
It’s really, really hard to be on my own. I’ve been honest about that, I don’t think it would be a shocker to anyone who’s read any number of these Substack posts to hear me say this, but I wasn’t meant to live on my own. I’m supposed to be with her, here, in this house that we bought together and filled with things and dogs and joy and love together. And yet here I am. On my own, surviving another day. Whether I want to or not.
To be clear, I don’t want to die. And I wouldn’t do anything to intentionally hasten my end. Don’t worry about that. But it’s a pretty common thing for widowed people to feel this way, and it’s a weird sensation. I’m not afraid of dying either, not like I probably used to be (it’s hard to think back to some of the ways I thought or felt before she was gone). When it happens, it happens. I hope it’s fifty years from now, since I have a lot of things to learn and do and appreciate and teach before then. But I don’t especially want to be here without Kellie either. Just being honest, once again.
It’s so hard to do my university work and teach a workshop and see counseling clients and do homework for my classes and have meetings and do paperwork and then, at the end of all that, know that Coco and Ivy have missed me all day and really need to spend quality time. I’ve gotta eat and sleep and drink water and take my meds and pay bills, as all of us do (because we live in a capitalist hellscape). It’s just a lot. I know I’m probably sounding a little whiny tonight, but I’m okay with that. I’m just tired and had a hard afternoon.
I miss Kellie so much. If she was here, almost everything that is currently stressing me out and weighing me down would recede into the background, like it so often did. She had this miraculous ability to talk me through all of the worries in my head, even though she wasn’t actually in my head with me. She knew me and saw me in a way that nobody else has ever been able to (and nobody else will ever be able to, either). I can have conversations with her all day, and often do—but I can’t get that feedback from her. I can’t be soothed by her. I can’t get the comfort that only came from hearing her voice or having her pat me on the head and tell me that it’ll all be okay.
And don’t get me wrong, I still have hope that it will be, usually. But I have no more certainty of that, since every single thing is predicated on me not screwing it up all on my own.
So that’s where I’ve been this afternoon. Missing her, having this deep itch that can never again be scratched (because she’s the only one with a key to that lock). I’m so glad that I can still experience joy and love and happiness and hope and all of those things, because if she had to be here for me to have positive feelings I don’t know how I’d make it. Since, as we’ve established, she’s not here anymore.
I’m pretty excited about the brand-new Zelda game (well, brand-new Zelda remake) of Ocarina of Time that came out today. I’ve spent an awful lot of my life playing Zelda games, I have a Zelda tattoo, and so it’s kind of an important thing to me. It’s awesome getting to play back through this world, with changes and updated graphics and everything. I wish Kellie was here to play it again with me. But then, I wish she was here for every second of every day.
This weekend is going to be a really big deal for me. After five years of being a part of my Ann Arbor Quaker meeting community, I’m visiting there in-person for the first time. My dear friends Margot and Todd are hosting me for a whirlwind couple of days, and I could not be more excited to spend time with them and also some others that I’ve spent hundreds of hours with and yet never been in the same room together. It’s going to be really great. Margot has spent a week or so trying her best to convince me not to go into this weekend with a scarcity mindset, thinking that I have to experience every single thing in Ann Arbor and see all the people and all the things in a couple of days, because that’s not realistic and also because I don’t have the stamina to manage it. She has been incredibly gracious and kind and has worked hard on a plan for our weekend that will maximize our fun, and I’m very very happy about it. Stay tuned!
I hope you have a great weekend, but I promise you it won’t be as great as mine.
Hugs,
Matt