Turned Up Too Loud

So, I flew back home to Lincoln Friday, and I have been struggling with a lot of different feels.  Some tied to that, others just showing up like they got something to say.   That’s probably not random at all.  Just part of the process.  Either way, they are here and they are loud.  This is by far the most intense the feels have felt since my Beautiful Bride passed.  Today, everything got cranked up to 11, I’m old and don’t like music that loud anymore.

I want to say this first, I felt incredibly supported and loved over those two weeks.  The kind of love and support that only old friends can give.  Some of these folks go back to the early 90’s, Navy days.  I remember their kids being born, and now those kids are grown ass adults.  One day we were smoking ribs, hanging out and I had to go sit on another room.  Just overwhelmed from sharing space with so many folks I love. 

Sharing space like that, chosen family all in one place, is something I haven’t found yet in Lincoln.  And this time it hit different, because it was just me.  No Beautiful Bride.  She was always the life of the party at those sorts of events and that showed up hard.  She loved a great party.  Always quick with a story, or even quicker with the most amazing laugh when other stories were told.  It just felt weird and I feel lonely in a way I hadn’t felt before.   

That led something I wasn’t expecting, guilt.  Which is weird because I don’t really feel guilt, never have, and she figured that out early.  Guilt is an emotion I don’t have much experience with, so it is hitting harder and sticking around longer than other ones I have been cycling through since her death.  I caught myself feeling weird about how long it took for it to show up this strong.

I know grief is a fickle bitch, but I was not expecting it to show up and punch as hard as it has.  It is almost like it picked the one emotion I have the least experience with and decided that was my weak point.  This isn’t to say this hasn’t been hard.  I am only saying I have more experience processing almost every other emotion or feeling.  So maybe it is just an opportunity to practice, which pissed me off because I don’t want to practice on that one, I have lived the better part of my life not feeling guilt and I am not sure I want to start now. 

I also started feeling some guilt about these blog posts.  So much about me and not about her.  Seems silly to think about but that is what is going on in my head.  And one thing I have learned through my time on the journey, we cannot control how we feel.  Best we can do is control our reaction to those feelings.  I also felt a bit of guilt about writing so much about how I am feeling, it sorta feels like I am wallowing around in it.  Intellectual Smitty knows that is not the case, but emotional Smitty ain’t so sure right now.  I know this is part of the process but damn it Jim, I am not a guilt dude!

It’s a funny thing, our feelings and the emotions that are connected to them.  In my brain, the intellectual part, I know this is part of this journey.  The emotional side of my brain cares little, that dichotomy is a cruel joke the universe plays.  It isn’t just grief either, it has been around for a long time, at least with me.  Like guilt I guess, it is the universe saying here is something to test you, to test your mettle.  Like all things in life, we get the test first and the lesson later.  Seems backwards to what it oughta be but that’s what it is, at least for me.

Aside from the guilt bit, I also came away with an awful lot of uncertainty about what the next chapter is.  I am super fortunate to be in a position that I can really do anything I want to, well within reason.  I just don’t know what it wants to be yet and if I follow the lessons from the rest of my life, the universe will put something in front of me when its time.  In some ways I just wanna get on with it, and in others I know forcing things never produces good outcomes, at least in my lived experiences.  So, in addition to everything else that seems to be swirling around me, there is that quandary too.

Whether I like it or not, this thing does not come in a straight line.  That whole turned it up to 11 feeling, as much as I hate it, it doesn’t feel like going backwards as much as it does something new showing up.  It might just be the next layer deciding it’s time for you to deal with me now.  This seems to be the part where it stops being something I understand in my head and turns into something I must feel and experience.

Being around folks, folks who knew us when we were all still trying to figure life out, that was different.  It wasn’t just missing her, it was missing us.  Who we were together in those spaces.  That version of me is still in there somewhere, but it is just off balance and unable to get firm footing.  It’s kinda feels like I’m carrying half of something that used to be whole, and I just don’t know what to do with that.  And that uncertainty sits heavy on me.  I know this next chapter, whenever it arrives, will probably have something to do with figuring out how to hold onto that part of us without getting stuck in it.  All that while I am also learning how to be half of what I once was.

And maybe, even the parts I don’t like, especially the guilt, aren’t wrong.  I don’t have to like all the parts, but I also don’t think any of them are mistakes.  They are just part of the system that is Smitty trying to reset after the most massive overhaul to date.  I damn sure don’t feel ready for any of it, I don’t even like the test first, lesson later arrangement, never have.  But most likely this isn’t about doing it right or even doing it fast.  Maybe just doing the dang thing is the thing to do, whatever the hell the dang thing is.  That intellectual side of my brain knows this, the emotion side… yeah, that bastard is still telling me something very different.  Damn it.

And I keep coming back to the same thought.  It’s not just that she is gone.  It’s that the version of me that existed with her does not have a place to stand anymore.  And I don’t think I know how to build that footing back yet.  At some point I am guessing this settles down a bit.  Or maybe I just get a little better at carrying it.  Either way, today wore me slap out.  So yeah, everything still feels turned up too loud.  And the knob just spins when I try to turn it down. 

So I Stay, and I Keep Reading

I keep reminding myself that this is going to work out, that Smitty is going to be OK.  Even though there are days when it just doesn’t feel like it.  Maybe days is stretching it at this point.  Maybe it’s hours, or minutes or moments where it just seems overwhelming to me.  I also remind myself that I will not have the dynamic duo I had for so long.  The we, the us, and the they are gone.  I  am now just the me, the he, and the I.  It still feels weird to be using those tenses, and I stumble over them all the time.  I guess that will be the norm for a while, maybe forever and I don’t even mind anymore, small reminders of who we were together.

I know this is not my forever, this is a chapter and thank goodness chapters come to an end and a new one begins, that is the way of things in the world.  If I span across the whole journey, this chapter is the one I like the least.  It has been the most difficult, I think because I was so used to having a partner in the game.  Someone who would listen, encourage, support and love me, just like I did for her.  It feels a little isolating to be thinking about this and working my way through it without her, I miss her wisdom in moments like these.

I still have to fight the urge to treat this moment like the whole story.  It feels so large and heavy that it is sometimes hard to see over or around it and recognize that this is just a chapter in a much larger story.  The story we created was simply amazing by any standard.  I knew that and so did she, but I don’t think I understood the magnitude of how amazing we were together.  Spending a couple of weeks here in Florida, surrounded by chosen family, has been a great reminder of that, and I am grateful for each of those reminders, spoken and implied.

Somewhere out there, there is a version of me who made it through all of this.  In some ways I wish I could time travel forward to that dude.  Other times that feels like cheating.  I don’t really know how to explain that part.  I just know it hits wrong.  I just know there is something about skipping ahead that feels wrong, like I’d be missing some ugly part that was necessary to help me become whoever I am supposed to be after this chapter.  I don’t like that, not even a little.  But I also know I don’t get to only read the good parts the story.  So, I will keep moving through the pages, wherever the story goes and however difficult to read, until I get to that future me, who will have been forged into that future me by the journey itself. 

Realizing I’m no longer the one writing this story is really messing with my head.  It is disorienting in a way that does not make sense to me, her absence just turns up the volume on all of it.  It’s like the whole thing gets louder when I try to make sense of it.  I feel like most of that comes down to how badly we want to believe we are in control, like if we just try hard enough or think clearly enough, we can simply negotiate with the page to say something different.  But that ain’t how this works, not really.  Letting go and just being feels wrong, almost like I am violating some of the base code I am programmed with.  Every thing in me wants to push back, rewrite a few lines of code, to do something other than just sitting with it.  Submitting to the page I’m actually on is hard.  Real hard.  It feels very much in conflict with my fight or flight instincts, the ones that have been baked into our DNA since before we made it to the top of the food chain.  All I have is how I show up for the page in front of me, even when showing up sometimes feels like the hardest thing I have ever had to do. 

I don’t like this chapter.  I would not have chosen it in a million years.  It kinda like in book club having to read a book that ya don’t like.  You read it anyway, out of respect for the one who selected it.  This is the book that has been selected for me, and not reading it is not an option, that would be disrespectful of Beautiful Brides memory.  So here I am, slogging away, slower than I want to be moving and this book appears to have a lot of pages to turn.  Some days I make progress, other days I have to go back and reread the shit I didn’t like the first time I read it.  I just keep showing up, and that counts! 

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, I found myself on the same beach where we said our vows again at 20 years in.  Sunrise, the same kind of quiet, the same sounds of the ocean doing its thing.  Only this time it was just me, well technically just me.  I had carried her there and did the only thing  I knew how to do, I let her go into the place we loved.  I don’t know if there are words for that moment that actually do it justice, I had nothing but tears then, and now as I type this.  It did not feel like closure.  It did not fix anything.  But it felt right, the kind of right that comes with absolute certainty.  It felt like one small way to honor the story we had, in a place that knew us well when we were still a we.   I stayed long enough to feel it.  Then I walked away without really knowing how to feel about it.  

Somewhere out there is a version of me who has already read the whole book and knows how it ends.  I don’t get to flip ahead to that part though, I have to read it the way it’s written, page by agonizing page.  Regardless of how many times I reread a page, I am just trying to make it all make sense.  Not every page lands, not every chapter is fair, and it’s still my book to read.  Fair, that reminds me of something she used to say, fair is what ya pay to get on a bus and where ya go to get a funnel cake or corndog.  So I will just keep turning pages, trusting that something will shift along the way and trusting that when I finally reach the end of this chapter, I will understand why I had to read it in the first place.  So I stay, and I keep reading.

Where the Ocean Takes Over the Quiet

Turns out there were a couple of things that I seem to have forgotten about sunrise at the ocean.  Maybe not as much forgot but maybe things I simply had taken for granted since I have experienced them so many times.  Either way, 55 days into my new chapter, I wanted to share some words about the ocean that I somehow had missed.  The first is that transition from the world to the beach that happens on the walk from the car to the ocean.  This stretch of ocean is not new to me, I have taken this walk more times than I can count over the 25 years Bride and I lived here, but it does not feel the same now.  

When I get out of my car, the sounds of the world exist.  Rumbling of cars driving around, the hum of air conditioners, the honking of horns, or maybe the screaming of a siren.  The pitter patter of runners, joggers and walkers and occasionally the dude who asks ya for a few bucks.  There is like a 50 foot stretch on the walk to the ocean in which the sounds of the world start to die down. They are slowly being drowned out by the sound of the ocean. 

I love that transition almost as much as the sunrise.  In those few feet, the transition is also working on my mind, my mood, and I slowly transition to the anticipation of seeing my old friend, the Atlantic.  The drowning out of the day to day of things, and the roaring up of the ocean.  It is almost like two dimmer switches operating in tandem, one going down and the other going up in perfect synchronicity.  Like an emergency generator slewing its phase to  that of the power grid before seamlessly switching back when power is restored.  I had forgotten how much I loved that short bit of the walk.

The spot I went this morning had a huge tidal pool between me and the ocean.  They are funny, and I have no idea how they form.  I am sure the google could answer that for me but sometimes I simply don’t need to know.  Sometimes they are inches deep, other times feet deep.  Today was about 18 inches, almost getting my cargo shorts wet as I walked through.  They are also very cold, I guess that is more from the overnight and the lack of connection to the warm water of the ocean.  The contrast hits harder than I remember. 

It is similar to the feeling of the sand in the morning after a rain.  The sand is cold and  mostly hardened, not the dry warm sand of the day.  I had also forgotten what a natural abrasive the beach can be.  A daily walk on the beach would not doubt save folks thousands of dollars of grinding and polishing our heels and feet before pedicures, which I am getting another one of while I am here.    

Even in winter the water here is always pretty warm, a product of the gulf stream zipping by no doubt.  The first day I was here I sat up on the dry sand, I didn’t even have a towel yet.  I resolved that by immediately buying a folding chair, like the ones at a tailgating party.  I also bought a beach towel, just in case.  Sunday and today I sat in that chair in the surf, both days the tide was coming in.  Generally I would wait until the water was deep enough to hit my butt before sliding back a bit.  Not wanting to be soaking wet, I slid back when it got half way up my calf.

There is absolute relentlessness to the tides, on the way in, it churns pebbles, sea shells and coral into sand.  On the way out, dragging seaweed, kelp and shit dumbasses leave on the beach back into the ocean.  A constant cleansing, grinding up of what was and a renewal of the beach itself by depositing new life.  And the rats with wings keeping all that in balance, I watched this morning as one snatched a small crab up and ate it.

I was surprised how different the transition from the noise of the world to the sound of the ocean hit on these first couple of days.  This beach holds more than sand and ocean for me.  Bride and I actually got remarried here at 20 years in.  There are a lot of memories here for me.  Ya can’t spend that long in a place without it holding pieces of life that ya can’t quite set down.  It was a reminder that the world has not slowed down a bit.  People are still driving too fast, worrying about meaningless things, going to meetings that feel important in the moment, and seem irrelevant five minutes later. 

And I am still in it, doing the dang things that just feel different now.  But somewhere in that walk, there is a subtle shift.  The noise fades just enough, just enough for me to actually feel what’s hidden there.  It’s not louder, just clearer.  Grief has not really shown up for me when everything is loud.  It shows up in that 50 foot window, when things finally get quiet enough that I can’t avoid it. 

And what I am realizing is that I can’t live in either place all the time.  The noise lets me function in the world, and the quiet allows the space to feel all the feels.  That short walk is where both exist at the same time.  It feels like the closest to balancing all of this I have found so far.  Not fixing anything, not escaping anything, just learning how to move between the two in a way that might become manageable.  Kinda like my own two dimmer switches trying to stay in sync, even when the system underneath is rebelling against syncing up.

I also noticed how the tidal pool this morning felt a bit like my grief.  The tidal pools are disconnected from the whole, left behind as the tide goes back to its normal place.  Some are shallow, some are deeper than we expect in the dark, and they are always colder.  That cold hits hard and lingers as we wade through.  Sure, I could have probably walked around it, maybe even picked a different spot on the beach to avoid it, but sooner or later you just have to step on in, without overthinking it.  I don’t understand why some moments hit harder than others or why the water is colder in some areas than in others.  I don’t need a clear explanation for them, how they form or why they stick around or move, I simply accept that they do.

The abrasion bit, that one is real too.  The whole thing is wearing me down in slow, almost unnoticeable ways.  Or maybe not wearing me down as much as forming me into something new. Not anything catastrophic or all at once, just a constant knocking off of the edges and maybe even a bit of polishing.  The routines, the memories, and all the little mundane things that used to be automatic now seem to take more effort than before, all the history always popping in to remind me of my loss.  In some ways I know it’s not all bad, this is a part of the ride for all of us. 

That does not mean it does not suck, and it does not mean we don’t have to keep moving forward.  The friction some days feels like 36 grit on an angle grinder, just whacking away at it all.  Other days it feels like the methodicalness of 1600 grit on a whetstone with a chisel or block plane blade.  Not sure where beach sand lives on the grit scale but I know it is my favorite of grits.  Even walking on partially crushed up shells, I keep moving forward but I am aware of every step.   

The ocean does not rush it, and I am starting to see that I don’t need to either.  The dimmers are still there, one going up and the other going down, just not moving together the way they used to.  And ya know what, Im starting to think that’s not something I need to fix.  Maybe I just need to keep writing my three things, keep taking that walk, and let it find its own rhythm. 

And, all of this sucks.