The lockdown of the new normal is in full swing. Some morons are out there, waving flags around like a grade 4 graduation diploma or marriage certificate to ones’ first cousin… but mostly, those who can think, are all trying. We’re trying to stay away from the ones we love. We’re trying to make it on employment insurance. We’re trying to cope with 3 kids at home as a single parent and we’re trying to avoid the darkness of life locked in a 14th floor apartment with someone you don’t like. with no parks. no trails. no cherry blossoms.
We are trying.
For the greater good.
For others.
We are all better off if we stay here. stay.
stay home.

“i am very content in my stability”.

That’s how i described my life in 2019 to someone. I wasn’t ready for, nor welcomed upheaval. (but i was questioning my actions after having bought a home with a ‘new guy’).
i lost my husband to suicide, and that was how i had chosen to be defined for 3 years.
widow.
That doesn’t mean i was bawling my eyes out everyday. It just means i was me. I’d made a choice. I had found more love in my first life than many ever do, and i’d lost it. It was what it was and it sucked.
but it was me.
A widow to suicide.
Then it sucked less. Someone punched me in the love receptacle and there i was. Here I am. In love.  We bought a house and now we are making plans for the new home…

My widow label is fading. As it turns out, there’s no such thing as stability… you’d think i’d have figured that out by now.

Maybe that’s why i knew i’d be ok… (well, what is OK, really) after the pandemic changed our lives.
We were suddenly shut off from our families, our dinners, our pub nights, For some of us our jobs, our recitals…our normals.
When i was at work during the early days of the pandemic (pre-layoff) I’d washed my hands so often, my wrists were bleeding.
It stung. it hurt. it burned. it …not just physically, but emotionally. It felt like grieving.
Because it is. We are grieving. And no matter how much i scrubbed, it wasn’t making it better.

I woke up in the mornings thinking “my, what a weird dream”.. realizing minutes later, that this shit was real; this highly contagious virus was a punch in the gut to us as it was to the folks coming out of the great war in 1920.
100 years later, the joke is still on us.
That feeling of waking up with  pain. Both physical and emotional .
I recognized that  feeling sitting in the middle of my chest as grief. It was Sadly familiar. I remember waking up with that weight for weeks, months, looking for John, wanting to tell him about my weird dream… but he wasn’t there.
(Didn’t want to feel that again, thanks, world.)

But here it was… that familiar ache.
The loss of being able to HUG your friends? your family?
being able to help, to be , to exist?
no
you can’t… it’s a new depressing reality.
… painful
this is grief.

fuck

who wants this shit?

no one.

but here it is.

in. your. face.
in. your. heart.
heavy

But i’ve been through worse.
i’ve lost the love of my life. i’ve lost my breath. my heart beat. i’d lost everything but i am still standing. Don’t get me wrong,
this grief is bloody different than losing John, i’ll guarantee that… but to some extent, it might  better… wait. no. Not better,  I AM better. No. WAIT. I’m resilient.
i am stronger.

Things still suck. i’m just better equipped. I can only hope that when we get though this, we will all be better. stronger. smarter. i never thought i would breathe, let alone stand after losing John. i could not. could NOT see a day where i’d laugh, smile, breathe, love, live again.
well, i’m doing that.
And I’m picking out appliances.

i’ve been though worse.
this absolutely sucks. not gonna lie, but this is only a test of your strength.

i know you have “got this”.
hell, if this pansy arse girl got through what i did, we’re all going to be ok, i promise.

Now go back inside and let the smart caring people do their stuff.