Six Months Later

I’ve decided to start posting to this blog again.  I had hoped in November that I was ready to start my life over.  I was feeling pretty good and had a new interest–screenwriting.  I was busy with my clubs and even had a little paid work once in a while.

In March, almost 18 months to the day after Hal died, I suddenly decided that I needed to move.  I set about getting the house ready to show, and a large part of that was paring down my belongings.  Hal collected everything from soccer balls to Christmas ornaments; most of it had to go.

I took photos of his trophies and plaques, and kept a few things in the blanket chest and in a set of decorative trunks that I bought for the purpose of storing memorabilia.  Most of it was sold or given away, and the rest went to the landfill.  I included my own trophies and plaques, keeping only my gold medal, won in 2000 at the AAU national championship.

I painted, cleaned, rearranged.  I sold my large appliances and a good deal of my furniture.  I gave away two bookshelves of books.  By June I had pared my life down from 1700 square feet to 700 square.  I moved into a small luxury apartment in Hampton at the end of May.

By the end of June, I was in the midst of a crushing depression.  The move was only part of the problem.  For the last two years, I had a good friend, Cindy, who I could count on for assistance, sympathy and advice.  I could not have survived Hal’s death without her.  At the end of April, she had a heart attack, and after a 10-day vigil, her husband finally acknowledged that there was no hope of recovery and allowed her to die.

Coping with Cindy’s death on top of my move very nearly pushed me over the edge.  I looked around my new apartment and felt utterly alone in the world.  Had I moved forward in getting my life together or had I just changed my address?  Could I find work, support myself, find someone to love who loves me back?  It didn’t seem so.

I considered simply calculating out how long my money would last and choosing a day for my death.  I thought that I might have two years to wrap up the details of my life so my family wouldn’t have too much trouble packing my belongings, filing my last tax return, notifying my creditors of my death.  Perhaps, I thought, I could somehow enjoy the next two years if I knew that I didn’t have to try to survive beyond them.

I’m better now.  Anti-depressants are wonderful things.

There will be more coming on this blog.

Enough

I will stop posting to this blog.  At least for now.  I’ve renamed it and disconnected it from my newly redesigned web site, and plan to allow it to simply sit here.  I want to move on.  But who knows?  I may feel the need to return.  I hope I don’t.

I love you, Hal.  I miss you so very much.

Barack Obama Will Be President

Tonight I watched Barack Obama win the Presidential election, and I’m so depressed I wonder how I will get through the night.

Obama was my candidate.  I wanted very much for him to win.  But like every other good thing that has happened since Hal died, I mourn it because he isn’t here to celebrate it with me. 

I haven’t posted to this blog in over a month.  Instead, I’ve been trying to make plans for my future, trying to find a career path to take me through the rest of my life, and trying to hope.  Tonight, I’ve been thinking that I’d be better off just to give up.

My grief and depression, my loneliness and hopeless is like a beach ball that I’m trying to hold under the water of my daily routine.  I smile and say I’m okay, I go to the gym and to the dojo, I show up for my guitar lessons and club meetings, I go to the grocery store, but all the while I’m struggling to keep my despair submerged.  I go to bed at night exhausted from the effort, and if I allow myself to become too tired, I lose my grip, my real feelings pop to the surface, and I run home to weep.

Obama has just delivered his victory speech.  Jesse Jackson is crying on national television.  I’m crying too.

I haven’t the strength anymore for the life I’m living, for the life I want.  I think I’m going to give up on it and retreat to a smaller, less ambitious life that will be more manageable, one that will leave me with enough energy to hold down that beach ball, because if I let go of it, if I let it float, I’ll drown.

Work. Eat. Bathe. Watch TV.  Sleep, if I can.  Accept the fact that I will be alone for the rest of my life, because who wants an obese woman in her late 40s?  I certainly don’t, but I’m stuck with myself.

My First Anniversary

On Sunday, it was a year since Hal died.  I managed to get through it without hardly thinking about it by watching television.  I’d spent 10 days in Colorado visiting family, and had recorded a lot of shows, which I watched.  As I’ve noticed before, television is a good way to keep from feeling my own feelings.

In fact, I was feeling pretty good, and had considered telling my therapist that I no longer needed to see him.  However, I found myself wiping away tears on my way to his office this morning.  He’s concerned that I’m not allowing myself to grieve.  I tried, but couldn’t manage to tell him how I have longed for an opportunity to just put my head on someone’s shoulder and cry.

My therapist is also concerned that I don’t have any friends outside my clubs, that I see no one that I’m not, in some way, paying to see either through club dues, lessons, or copays for psychotherapy.  Why don’t I have any friends?  He believes that it’s because I have chosen an identity that doesn’t allow me to get close to anyone. 

He’s right about that.  I swing between thinking I’m too intelligent for the meaningless chitchat that goes with simply “hanging out” with another person to believing that I’m not someone who’s worth knowing.

So here I am, on the high side of 40, overweight, friendless, unemployed, basically doing nothing with my life and not even knowing who I am.  What am I going to do with the years that I have left?  Right now I have no idea.

On Going Back to Work

I applied for a job today.

Lately, with the help of my psychotherapist, I have begun to realize how unsatisfying unemployment is.  When I first quit work, I struggled with the feeling that I was useless and going nowhere, but I eventually learned to enjoy the freedom of unemployment.  Hal supported me while I wrote, went to writing conferences, writers’ club meetings and other activities related to my dream of becoming a writer.  I took an occasional art class or music lesson, pursued my interest in the martial arts, and did some volunteer work.  I did most of the errand-running and housework at home, so Hal could simply come home from work and relax.  Basically, I was a 1950s housewife.

Now that Hal is gone, I no longer enjoy unemployment.  I worry that Hal’s insurance money will run out, leaving me with no way to pay my bills.  I dream of being a writer, but I don’t seem to be able to work hard enough at it to realize this dream.  My psychotherapist suspects that I don’t really want to write novels or screenplays, but actually want to be free to pursue whatever catches my interest.  If I can write about what has my attention at the moment, then I’m not just “dong nothing,” I’m conducting research.

The problem with having an assured income (for the moment) and no job to fill my day is that I don’t have to budget my time.  I have all day, all week, all month to write, so why hurry?  I can watch the “House M.D.” marathon and write tomorrow.  If I had a job, my free time would be more precious to me, and I would actually find that I get more done.  That’s the theory.

After my last session, I decided that I would give myself a few more months to approach writing like a business and actually acquire a career as a novelist or screenwriter.  Then Sologig sent me a notice about a writing job at NASA.  It’s only part-time, which would allow me to pursue my other interestss, yet it promises to provide me with enough income to significantly cut the amount of money I pull from my investments for my living expenses.  And I could see myself doing the job.  I sent in my resume.

But now I have a new problem, though one that’s not too unpleasant.  If I get called for an interview, I need a suit.  If I get hired, I need a work wardrobe.  I had not planned to buy work clothes, thinking that I would wait until I could fit into the clothes I wore when I last worked, before I gained too much weight to wear them.  I may have to spend money buying clothes that will soon be too big for me.

Why Do I Write?

So I’ve had three sessions with my psychotherapist, and here’s where I am:  Nowhere.

I’ve been here for a long time, most of my life, really.  But especially in the last six years, when I quit working to write full time.  I wrote–a little.  I took karate classes, but haven’t yet gotten my black belt.  I joined Toastmasters, but haven’t yet received an advanced communicator award.  I’ve taken art classes, but have never produced a work of art.  I’ve taken guitar lessons, but haven’t yet learned a song.  I’ve mostly been sitting at home, hiding. 

My therapist asked me whether I choose to write because I want to write and have something to say or if I choose to write because it gives me an excuse to retreat from the world.  No job, no coworkers, no bosses, no expectations.  And now, no one to tell me it’s okay, that he supports me, that he believes in me.

I depended too much on Hal’s support, on his indulgence.  Without it, my artistic lifestyle seems empty and meaningless.  The question my therapist is asking is this:  Can I change it?  Do I want to?

Two More Years

After the frightening episode a couple of weeks ago when I wondered if going on without Hal was even worth doing, I called my old therapist and made an appointment.  I’d last seen him four years ago, after I quit my job to write full time and was struggling with a lot of anxiety as well as a feeling that I was doing nothing with my life.  Although I got a lot of good advice from him, I eventually opted for a shortcut and asked my primary physician for antidepressants to deal with my anxiety.

I never got over the feeling that I’d cheated him somehow by going on medication.  He’d worked hard, I thought, trying to help me.  And here I am, four years later, no longer dealing with anxiety but with my other problems unresolved.  I still have nothing to show for my writing efforts, and now I don’t even have the support and encouragement of a spouse.  I sit alone at my desk, writing, sometimes dreaming of having some success, but ultimately realizing that my work just isn’t good enough.  Or maybe I’m just not willing to what it takes to finish the work and get it published.  I feel like a failure.

At my appointment last week, my therapist gave me some very bad news.  It takes three years to get over the death of a spouse.  Like most people in my position, he says, I’m trying to feel better too quickly, which is just making me feel worse.  I cried the rest of the day.  Two more years of this?  How on Earth am I going to survive another two years?

My mood this week is made worse by the fact that my desktop died last weekend, and my efforts to make my laptop serve as my main computer haven’t been successful.  I spent 7 hours on the phone with tech support this week, and as pathetic as it sounds, I was glad to have someone to talk to.  I’ve also had painters in, and have been frustrated with delays, poor workmanship and having my house torn up. 

Having the painters moving my things around have shown me how much junk I have in this house–Hal’s things that I no longer need or want, my own things that I need to thin out and stuff I collected for art projects that I never got around to doing.  I desperately need to have a yard sale or something.  I sometimes think that I should just sell it all and hit the road.  Maybe I should just travel around a while, for as long as the money and my health will let me, and look for a place where I can settle down and start over.

I don’t think I can stand two more years here.

Who Will Be Strong for Me?

In the 10 months since Hal died, no one has ever wrapped their arms around me and held me while I cried about it.

There are a couple of reasons for this:  The first is that I was trying to be strong for my relatives.  My family members were still reeling from my mother’s death and had pretty much come out to Virginia for Hal’s memorial immediately after attending my mother’s memorial in Texas.  We all sat around, dry-eyed for the most part–I, my father, my sister and two aunts–none of us willing to collapse and force another grieving relative to set aside his or her own pain in order to comfort us.

That left as my only option a friend on whose shoulder I could cry, and I have none.  My social circle consisted of people with whom I was friendly but only saw at Toastmasters meetings or writers groups and Hal’s friends.  The latter evaporated from my life within days of Hal’s death.  The former spoke to me on the phone–a few came to the memorial–but none came to the house, nor did I ask them to. 

The one exception is Cindy, who helped me invest Hal’s insurance money so I could have an income to live on and made herself available for advice and assistance when I had to deal with things like the ill treatment I received from my bank.  She and her husband have become my movie buddies.  I worry now that I will become too dependent on her, that I will need too much and make her regret her decision to befriend me, so I don’t let her see me at my worst.

This weekend, when I was at one of my lowest points since Hal died, when I wondered whether I would simply die from the grief and even half-wishing that I would, there was no one I could call to come over and comfort me.  I had to endure the pain alone.

And even if I had called someone, how could she have helped?  Hal and I got rid of our sofa in favor of two recliners because neither of us was comfortable in our bed, him because of his illness and me because of my weight.  If someone had come to the house and offered up her shoulder, where could she do that?  Nowhere in my house can I sit side-by-side with another person.  I suppose that says something about me.

Yesterday I made an appointment with my therapist, whom I haven’t seen in about five years.  He has a sofa in his office.  This is what I’m down to: paying for comfort by 50-minute therapy hour.

On My Absence

Earlier this month I happened across a call for entries for memoirs, and I decided to write about the week that Hal died.  I spent several days writing and revising my contest entry, crying the entire time.  But when it was finished, I felt better.  Writing the memoir seemed to serve two purposes:  First, at this point I want to have published something about Hal so he can be memorialized, and this means more to me than being acknowledged as an author of something publishable.  Second, it was cathartic.  For a while I felt better.

So I started working on a love story.  I’d been thinking about it for a while, but wanted to put off writing it until I finished the novel I’m currently working on.  It seemed, however, that my muse wouldn’t wait; I set my novel aside and started a new one.

After several attempts, I finally had to admit that the new story wants to be a screenplay.  I never wanted to write screenplays because it’s a tough business.  Far easier, I thought, to write a good novel and have it optioned and made into a screenplay by someone else.  But again, my muse wouldn’t be denied.

This week, in a creative mania, I wrote a treatment and a screenplay.  I did nothing else, not even the grocery shopping, and wrote up to 18 hours a day.  Again, I felt better for a while.  Maybe, I thought, this was what I was meant to do all along.  Maybe if I just admitted I wanted to write screenplays, as cliched as that might be, I might finally get my life together–a new career, goals to set and meet, an income of my own rather than simply living off Hal’s life insurance. 

The good feeling didn’t last.  Today, I’ve been sitting at my desk, my screenplay in front of me, fantasizing about what it would be like to sell it and see it made into a movie.  Does James Lipton interview screenwriters?  What would I say if I won an Oscar?  The more I thought about these things, the more depressed I became.

How can I enjoy any good thing that might come my way if Hal isn’t here to experience it with me?  I fear that I’m destined to mourn my victories rather than celebrate them.  And if that’s so, what is the rest of my life going to be like, as I try to achieve something while at the same time dreading doing so?

Hal died 10 months ago today.  I’m so lonely and depressed that as I sit here writing this entry, I honestly can’t imagine how I can go on.

Is Love a Tragedy?

I’m working hard on my science fiction novel and getting to the part where my hero is going to start falling for his heroine.  At the same time, I’m thinking about my next novel, which will be a contemporary romance.  All this has got me thinking about love.

Will I fall in love again?  Do I want to? It’s all just theoretical right now, because I still love Hal; I feel it every day, even though he’s gone. Even if there were someone I could love and who could love me, I don’t want to love anyone else right now, and probably not for a long time yet.  But the real question is whether I would ever want to be in love again.

What I’ve learned from losing Hal is that even if everything goes right and you find the person you want to be with the rest of your life, what you end up with is this:  Your most generous, most loving wish is that your loved one die first so that person can be spared the pain of having to go on without you.  What a sad, tragic thing love ultimately is.