Today felt like one of those days where everything falls into place. You know the ones, where the stuff you want to mark off your to-do list all gets done and you don’t feel any sadder than usual. Where self-care feels doable and not like the faintest suggestion of your reality. You get it—a day that you wish would last longer, not one where you start looking at the clock halfway through hoping it’s somehow magically become nighttime and you can write it off and move on to tomorrow.
The day (after I got through some work) truly started with a wonderful massage. I’ve decided to increase the frequency of those to every other week rather than every three weeks, since they help me so much. Beyond that, Kellie’s birthday month is only a few weeks away, and I’m very cognizant of the need to take extra-special care of myself through November and December. They won’t be regular months for me, and I’m not going to pretend they are and just white-knuckle my way to 2027.
If I end up acting like a weirdo in the last couple months of this year, please just bear with me and know that I fully expect them to be really challenging. November was always dedicated to Kellie, and everything (from the food we ate to the movies we watched and everything in-between) was dedicated to Kellie’s happiness. This will be the first November since 1995 that will not be the case for me, which is beyond strange.
November is also Thanksgiving, and it’s been our tradition for a very long time for me to make a huge Thanksgiving feast. That’s not in the cards for me this year. And then, of course, comes December. Kellie was a huge fan of Christmas, and so our list of annually-watched Christmas movies was up to almost 40 films.
I’m not saying I’m planning to consciously avoid Christmas-related stuff, but none of these things are the same without her, and I don’t expect them to hold the same resonance.
After my massage this morning (which was truly great), I headed for Youngstown to spend some time with someone special. I probably haven’t spoken much about Aaron here, but he’s a really important person from my past. At the first college I went to (until Thanksgiving of my freshman year, at least), Aaron was someone I clicked with immediately. He was so kind and compassionate and made me feel a little less weird to be back in the US and doing the whole college thing (briefly). We stayed in touch and he ended up serving as the Best Man in our wedding. We even went to his wedding after that. And then—you know, life stuff happened. I’ve been reflecting a lot about what the heck actually happens to us as human beings that leads us to not maintain connections with people who matter to us a whole lot.
Our conversation today was really special to me. We got to spend two hours catching up, and it felt so good to have him back in my life (and to be back in his, too). It’s embarrassing to say this, but we haven’t sat down and talked since 1999—TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS. That’s absolutely ridiculous. Even more ridiculous that we never had an argument or anything, we just stopped talking for no actual reason.
Funnily enough, I completely forgot to take a picture with Aaron today. So in lieu of a new one, here’s us at our wedding.
If you’ve read this newsletter for a bit, you know that one of my top current priorities is to establish a new life for myself that is sustainable in the long-term. It’s entirely possible that spending much time considering elements that I need to have in my life is a defense mechanism meant to help me over-intellectualize and distance myself from feeling my feelings.
It’s also entirely possible that I’m being wise in not just letting the chips fall randomly and then seeing what happens—that even if I run the risk of thinking I can “solve” this whole widower thing by being intentional about my life, it’ll help me out more than it hurts me.
Either way, I know that I need positive and supportive friends in my life. As many as I can reasonably get. I mean, I’m not out at bars buying people drinks and begging them to be my buddy. I’m also not posting an application to be my friend online and hoping it goes viral (though that kind of sounds like it would be fun). But I’m seriously and genuinely trying to cultivate more relationships that feel healthy and meaningful. A part of that is me trying to have those relationships be reciprocal ones. I know I’m at a time in my life when it’s easy to want to offer me support, but I worry a great deal that that dynamic could lead to pretty lopsided friendships down the road. And I honestly don’t want to give people a chance to ignore my calls or texts or whatever just because they don’t have it in them to offer support at the moment. So that means a give-and-take, where people see something of value in a friendship with me rather than just feeling sorry for me in the moment. I just don’t see that as a good long-term solution.
Friendships are hard for me!
There’s a pretty good chance that they’re hard for you too. One of the most common things I hear from my therapy clients and students is that they feel lonely and isolated and like they don’t have enough connections with other people. It’s another of those pretty universal aspects of the human experience at the moment, I think. None of us knows how to make friends, or how to retain the ones we’ve already got, and so if we’re lucky we hold on to a few for dear life. But the idea of increasing the number of one’s friends feels universal and also somehow mythical.
Regardless, that’s what I’m trying to do. I’ve talked the talk for a really long time. When I’ve given speeches about the deficits of hope that I see so often in rural communities like this one, I cannot tell you how often I have suggested that we need more people in our lives. I cannot tell you how often I have told people in self-care workshops and social work classes that we need to make more friends. I literally wrote a book chapter called “We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat” for a project that hopefully comes out someday, which is all about the importance of figuring out how to build community and connections rather than trying to make it through this current capitalist hellscape on our own. And yet I haven’t really done much of it myself until after Kellie died.
Ultimately, if there’s a theme to this season of my life, it’s “survive”. Maybe that means survive today by eating food and taking my medication and drinking water and sleeping. Maybe that means survive the emotional turmoil I have to deal with most of the time by beefing up my coping skills or just waiting out the worst times. Maybe that means survive the clutter, the lack of touch and isolation, and the sense of being trapped in my house without someone to care for the dogs by adding incredible people like Jessie and Amber and Ashley to my life, all of whom help me keep going. And maybe that means survive the loneliness by building and sustaining meaningful friendships.
Today, that list of meaningful friendships went up by one, and that gives me a lot of joy.
Take care of yourself. I’m finding myself smiling a lot this evening, and there are many worse emotions I could be feeling tonight than joy. That’s cause for celebration on my end.
Oh, and hey—if you want to be my friend, just let me know.
XOXO,
Matt
This is a good one 😊
Can I, can I, be your friend??