Turns Out Writing Is How I Listen

I was texting with a friend recently about my recent blog on loneliness.  They said I was able to put words to a feeling they sit with often.  They went through a divorce a couple of years ago that included relocating quite some distance away.  They also mentioned that I was inspiring them to write.  I encouraged them to do exactly that, even if they didn’t publish anything like I have done mine.  The conversation got me thinking about something I already knew but didn’t have all the words for.  I was reminded that I didn’t start this blog because I thought I had any answers.  Most days I’m trying to figure things out pretty much in real time.  In fact, I’ve discovered that many of the things I write about aren’t things I already know.  They’re things I find out while I am pecking on the keyboard. 

Looking back, I figured that out decades ago.  For as long as I can remember, I’ve done a lot of wandering around inside my own head.  I can spend days overthinking things, turning it over and over again, running down rabbit holes and revisiting conversations that ended a long time ago.  As a buddy of mine would say, “I think we have kicked that particular horse to liquefaction.”  I used to think writing was what happened after all that processing was done.  Think about, figure it out, and then peck away on a keyboard. 

I have known for a while that typing it out helps me, and since Sandy died, it has become clear that the writing is where the real processing is happening.  Thoughts floating around in my head tend to stay half formed, kinda like puzzle pieces scattered on the table.  Once they hit the keyboard, they slow down long enough for me to look at them.  The connections start to appear, things I thought I had a good grip on take on a different meaning.  Things I didn’t realize were bugging me suddenly pop up.   Some of the biggest things I’ve learned about grief, loneliness, friendship, gratitude, marriage, and myself weren’t conclusions I sat down with.  They were discoveries that showed up somewhere around paragraph 3.

It might not be apparent to Y’all, but many times these posts start in one place and end up in an entirely different place.  What begins as a story about an old photograph, a song on the radio, an empty chair, or a cup sitting on the counter often becomes some new discovery about myself.  The story gets me started, the writing helps me figure out where I was actually headed.  I see this progressing in my posts, especially since April, which hardly makes sense to me, and here we are anyway.  The object or the story was almost never the point.  It was just the thread I started yanking on. 

I think that is why I keep writing.  Not because I have some great wisdom to share, and certainly not because I have life all figured out.  That is definitely not the case.  If anything, the older I get the more comfortable I become admitting that I don’t.   What writing gives me is a chance to slow down long enough to pay attention to what’s happening in my body and brain.  Life in general moves along at a blistering pace.  Thoughts come and go, feelings show up, make a mess of things and then run off and hide in the corner.  Writing forces me to wander my ass over to that dark corner and sit with those feelings for a while.  And that forces the questions I wasn’t planning on being asked, and that I have even less of an idea how to answer.

One of the surprising parts has been discovering that the things I am learning along the way aren’t always mine alone.  Time after time someone reaches out and says, “I thought I was the only one who felt that way” or “I didn’t know how to put that into words until I read what you wrote.”  Or just the many little notes of appreciation for writing these posts and  sharing them with the world on my little blog.  Most times I find it a bit odd because I am usually trying to make sense of my own thoughts when I start typing.   Somehow, in the process of listening to myself, other people hear parts of their own story too.

Maybe that’s because the things we carry around aren’t nearly as unique as we like to think they are.  The whole human condition thing and all.  The details may vary, the names change, and the stories are different.  One person may be grieving the loss of a spouse, another is grieving a marriage that ended and a life journey diverted.  Someone else might have lost a parent, or a close friend.  For others it could be a dream that didn’t work out the way they had hoped.  The circumstances are different, and the feelings underneath most of the time are not.  Whatever it was that I uncovered while pecking away on the keyboard is usually something they see in themselves.   

Maybe that’s what kept rattling around in my head after we finished texting.  Not because they complimented my writing.  What stuck with me was the realization that they had seen a piece of themselves in something I wrote while trying to understand myself.  That’s kind of amazing when ya stop and ponder on it for a moment. 

Two people living very different lives, carrying different stories and different scars, somehow finding common ground in places neither of us would have chosen to visit.  It felt like one of those rare moments when two people realize they’ve been carrying the same thing, even if they arrived there on different roads.  Maybe I wasn’t trying to understand myself after all.  Maybe the thing I keep finding in these stories isn’t answers.  It’s connection.  Because when somebody says, “Yeah, I know that feeling,” you realize that neither of us are quite as alone as we might have thought we were. 

Here is the Oratory that started it all. 

Loneliness Has a Hell of a Marketing Problem

I feel like I have written about loneliness a few times, but it was sort of tangentially.  Lately,  the loneliness has felt a lot more tangible.  When most folks think about loneliness, it is about just being physically alone.  I used to think that too.  Then life introduced me to a wide variety of loneliness, and it turns out that lonely is a lot more complicated than having an empty house.  Don’t get me wrong, it is that, and it is so much more.

Over the last several months I’ve met many versions of loneliness that I never knew existed.   There is the obvious loneliness, like her side of the bed being empty.   The passenger seat in the truck being empty.  All of the control chairs, empty.  The shower, where she kept an extraordinary amount of products is now down to my three lonely little items sitting in a space that belonged to both of us.  And the emptiness of no “Mornin Beautiful”.

Those are actually the easiest versions to identify.  They are visible.  You can see the empty chair.  You can see the empty side of the bed.  That next kind of loneliness is harder because no one sees it.  The loneliness of touch is one that I have been struggling with and have already written about.  An empty hand when I am walking around.  No long hugs.  No sitting with my head in her lap watching Star Trek.  All of the casual ways we touch our person over the course of a day, all empty, all quiet and all of it sucks.  There is no way to prepare yourself for just how loud this emptiness is.

And then, eventually, loneliness gets even sneakier.  The missing touch isn’t just about what you don’t feel anymore.  It’s about all the little moments throughout the day when your brain still reaches for your person before it remembers they’re not there.   This is the loneliness that nobody sees but holds equal measure.  I have no one to tell funny stories to, as I would have today listening to a first date conversation when I stopped at Firehouse subs for lunch.  I really wanted to show her my coffee cup I painted to match the Brakes on the Galaxie.  What gets me is that split second when I think I still can.  These realizations come dozens of times a day.  This loneliness isn’t like a giant wound, it is a thousand tiny ones, and that sucks too. 

And eventually I realized there was yet another version of loneliness hiding underneath all of those little moments.  Like when I hear a funny story at Firehouse subs, it isn’t just that I have nobody to tell.  It’s that nobody will laugh at the same parts that she would laugh about.  No one else would know all the characters from forty years of stories that we could compare that couple today on their first date to.  No one else has all the context. 

Bride and I spent decades building our own little world to play in.  It was filled with inside jokes, vacation disaster stories, and all the stories we shared on our adventures.  We could tell a whole story just with a look across the room.  Hahaha, I miss that.   Over the decades, we built a Large Language Library, kinda like AI does.  Day by day we added context and stories and shared experiences, and inside jokes.  And we used it in so many ways.  And then one day, I found myself holding all those books by myself.  That is a different kind of lonely. 

As lonely as that can feel, it would be unfair for me to pretend I am walking through this thing alone.  I have amazing family, chosen and real, coworkers who check in on me, and people who have shown up in ways I never expected.  And that is when I discovered yet another version of loneliness.  You can be deeply loved and still feel lonely.  That sounds contradictory, and I guess the only way to experience that is to live through it.  I am blessed with an army of people in my life who care about me.  They want to and have helped in ways I will never be able to repay.  They have shown up, literally in many cases, and been present for me and I am grateful for every bit of it.  I’ve sat in rooms surrounded by people I love, people who were showing up for me in every way possible, and still I found myself looking at an empty chair wishing her cute little ass was sitting in it.

There is a harsh reality though, no one else lived inside that little world Bride and built one brick at time together.  No one else carries the same memories, the same experiences or the same context.  They understand pieces of the story. They understand the hurt, and they understand I miss her, as do they.  They will never be able to fully understand what it was like to be us.  And that is another version of lonely.  Maybe that’s what makes loneliness so hard to explain to people who haven’t experienced it.  Both things can be true at the same time.  It’s all strange but a standout in this has been the loneliness and being loved can exist at the same time, back to the paradox.  The dialectic nature of loneliness is so fucking weird.  And somehow, loneliness still had one more surprise waiting on me. 

As strange as all those versions of loneliness are, I think the one that catches me off guard the most is the loneliness of a missing future together.  I have heard grief is more about missing the past, and it is.  I miss a thousand yesterdays, actually 12,995 yesterdays.  Twelve thousand nine hundred ninety five days, and I wanted more.  I miss old vacations, I miss old stories, I miss all the moments that are already written.  What I did not see coming was how much I would miss the things that never will get written at all. 

The trips we were still going to take.  The projects we had in planning stages, and the conversations we were yet to have.  The version of us that neither of us became yet.  Sometimes I realize I’m not lonely for who Bride was.  I’m lonely for who we were still supposed to become.  I am lonely for the future that will never be. 

Maybe that’s the biggest thing I’ve learned through all of this.  Every time I thought I understood loneliness, it showed up wearing a different costume.  It’s not just an empty chair sitting across from me.  It’s not just an empty hand.  It’s not just having no one to tell the story to.  It’s not just carrying a library of memories by myself.  It’s not just being loved and still feeling alone.  And it’s not just grieving the future that never got a chance to unfold. It’s all of those things, and probably more to come, all at the same time. 

Loneliness wears a lot of costumes.  Sometimes it can look like an empty house.   Sometimes it looks a crowded room.  Sometimes is looks like an empty passenger seat.  Sometimes it can look like me in the garage saying, hey Beautiful come look at this.  Sometimes it can look like 12,995 days of memories by myself.  And sometimes it can look like the realization that there are new memories of us that will never get written. 

Loneliness has a hell of a marketing problem because most people think they know what it looks like.  I know better now.  And if you happen to be carrying your own version of lonely, whatever costume it’s wearing today, just know you are not the only one meeting it.  I know I sure needed to hear that myself. 

The Loss of Intimacy Has Sucked

I don’t know if can finish writing this one, I’ve started it three times already and then deleted it.  Part of me isn’t sure I want to admit any of this out loud.  The other part is exhausted from just carrying it around.  Over the last few days, I have listened to a song more times than I can count, and one line keeps settling in my chest, they say real healing starts when the truth gets told.  So, this is me trying to tell my truth.  I hope I make it to the end.  I hope I have the courage to post it if I do.

One of the strange things about grief is that folks tend to assume they know what hurts.  They know I miss her.  They know I miss the conversations, and they know I miss the future I thought we would have together.  And they’re right, I miss all of those things. What folks don’t always see are the things that quietly disappear underneath all of that.  The things that are harder to talk about.  The things that are even harder to admit.  The things we carry in silence because once they are spoken out loud, they are impossible to ignore.   The hell of it is silence has a hunger.  It feeds on what we hide, and somehow the things we refuse to talk about just seem to get bigger and heavier.   

One of the truths I’ve been avoiding, the loss of intimacy has fucking sucked.  Even typing that sentence makes me very uncomfortable.  Not because it isn’t true, but because it is.  Over the 115 days since I lost her, I have built a rehearsed reply for whenever someone asks how I’m doing.  Most of the time it isn’t even dishonest.  I’m working, I’m writing, I’m rebuilding the Galaxie, and I’m moving forward.  If I am being honest with myself, some days I do those things in an attempt to outrun my thoughts.  But there are still parts of this loss that have settled in my chest and are slowly weighing me down.  This is one of them.

Intimacy for me was never just one thing.  It was closeness, familiarity, trust, vulnerability, and being known.  I mean truly known by another person.  In many ways, I think she knew me better than I knew myself.  It was shared thoughts, shared history, shared understanding.  It was emotional, physical, and woven into the fabric of our daily lives.  I rarely stopped to think about it because it felt so natural.  It was the most stabilizing part of our relationship for me.  And when Sandy died, I lost every version of it all at once.

When most folks hear the word intimacy, they immediately think about sex.  That’s a part of it but it is not really what I have been struggling with.  What I miss are the things that happened a hundred times a week and never seemed important because they were just part of who we were.  Holding hands when we walked, a good hug when one of us had a shitty day.  A kiss every time one of us left the house, and another when we got home.  Sitting together, sometimes talking, sometimes reading, and sometimes just dicking around on the interwebs. 

Then reaching over, touching her hand without even really thinking about it. The casual physical connection that said, I’m here and you’re not alone.  She did that for me as much as I did for her.  Just a gentle reminder that I was not alone.  Those moments were so normal, so automatic that I never once stopped to appreciate how much they grounded me in love.  Those little moments were never the headline, but they were masterfully woven into the fabric of our lives.  Looking back, all those little touches were a constant reminder we belonged to each other.  And there were two people in the world who kept choosing each other.   I didn’t realize how much security, comfort and connection were hidden inside of something as simple as holding her hand or hugging each other.

We were deliberate about holding at least one hug every day for at least 30 seconds.  It was so long ago, I don’t remember which one of us read an article about the health and relationship benefit of doing that.  It is enough time for your breathing to align.  I used to believe our heartbeats did too.  Those hugs were moments when everything in the world faded and we both felt safe, secure and loved in ways that are hard to describe.  If you have never done that, do it today, and again tomorrow and the day after that, it is the most amazing feeling.      

And that daily dose of love is no more.   I think what surprised me the most is how lonely the loss of physical connection can feel.  I wasn’t prepared for just how lonely that would be.  The loneliness created by that loss is unlike anything I have ever experienced.  I mean, I have family, chosen and real, coworkers, and people who love me.  But there is a difference between being surrounded by those who love me and having my person.  There is a difference between being cared about and having someone reach over and reflexively squeeze my hand as a silent reminder that I am not carrying the weight of the world alone.  That kind of loneliness is really hard to describe and even harder to live with in the day to day of things. 

Maybe that is why this post has been so hard to write.  For 115 days I’ve carried this heavy ass thing by myself.  The truth is, some of the words I never say have started to feel like a prison wall of my own making.  It is easier to tell folks I miss Sandy than it is to admit how much I miss the intimacy of our life together.  It’s easier to talk about grief in general terms than it is to talk about specific things that sometimes leave me feeling completely lost.  Maybe that’s why I have those rehearsed answers at the ready.  Maybe that’s why I started this post three times already and deleted it each time.  Because saying this out loud makes it real, really real, and that really hurts.  And maybe admitting how much I miss all of it feels like admitting that part of me is still carrying a shattered heart, and there is a finality that I am not sure I am ready for.

Ya know, as I type this I am realizing maybe what I’ve been avoiding isn’t talking about intimacy at all.  Maybe what I’ve been avoiding is admitting what it means.  Maybe I’ve been avoiding admitting that in some ways I am still a little lost.  Because once I say these things out loud, I have to acknowledge something I have been trying very hard not to face.   Those hugs aren’t coming back.  That hand will never reach for mine again.  There won’t be another kiss when I leave the house, or when I get home.  The finality of that just fucking sucks.  It aches all the way down to my soul.  I guess that is probably why I deleted this post three times already.  Because some truths hurt more when they are spoken.  I have learned though, that they hurt just as much when carried in silence.  The only difference is one moves me forward and one keeps me stuck.  I have carried this heavy fucker long enough and I’m putting it down.

Truth be told, I don’t know if writing this helps.  I don’t know if posting it helps.  I don’t know if tomorrow will feel any different than today.  What I do know is that after 115 days, this truth is finally out in the open.  Maybe that is all this post was supposed to do, not solve anything, not heal anything, just telling the truth about where I am.

And today, that feels like enough.

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. 

Tough Couple of Days

It’s been a tough few days, and it started when I called her phone so I could listen to her voice message just to hear her vice again.  When I did, it sort of put me in a spiral, sorta feels like an out of control carousel that I have not been able to figure out how hop the fuck off.  I never liked carousels, and even less the last few days.  The loneliness has been a bit louder, and I am not a fan. 

Not hearing her voice, not being able to kiss her, not being able to touch her, not be able to hold hands, not be able see that little smile she would give me when I kissed her on the cheek and said “Mornin Beautiful”.  I don’t get to thumb rastle, I don’t get to touch each other’s fingers when we were looking at the TV, not being able to pinch her butt when she was cooking or doing something serious. I miss staring into her eyes and telling her I loved her and spooning when we went to bed.       

The loss of touch, of intimacy, not necessarily the sex part but the closeness part, has been the hardest part so far and the last few days have been particularly difficult.   I think because it is finally sinking in, maybe I am coming to the realization that my life is something very different now. 

Our life together was comfy, cozy, and deeply known to each of us.   It was hard to tell where one of us started and the other one ended.  We were one with the force.  It was not the kind of comfy that was missing any sort of adventure or excitement.  It was more like the comfiness of just knowing how she would show up and just be her in almost any situation, and her knowing the exact same thing about me. 

That intimate understanding of my favorite human, that comes with 38 years of knowing each other.   We knew all of it about the other one, the good, the bad, the ugly and the simply amazing.  And she had the amazing part dialed in, it was not something she had to do, it was simply who she was.      

Maybe this is the part where my new reality really starts to sink in.  Maybe this isn’t just a moment I’m trying to get through, maybe this is the life I am going to have to learn how to live.  I don’t just miss her, I miss us, and it fucking sucks!