Phone Calls

I just had a phone conversation with Allen's mom. It went well. I had wanted to tell her that I was ready to let go of ashes. And ask if she wanted some. I'm glad I asked.

The only thing I have done so far that wasn't what he wanted, is I have been holding on to some ashes. I have blogged about them before. I AM ready to let go... physically. I feel like I have emotionally moved so far past holding on to them. The only thing I was sad about talking to her was the fact that she started crying. I didn't mean to make her cry. She said she cries every day. I did lose both a husband and a grandfather, but she lost a son and her father. I can't imagine both of those things so close together.

I want her to have peace in her life. I feel like I have peace with it. Like everything has just happened that was supposed to. Maybe that's morbid.

Maybe it's selfish in some way.

I don't know and I don't care. I'm ok. I'm happy :).

I want everyone to be.

Hugs.

Anger Management

I have a special friend who recently spent 43 hours without electricity. And yes, it was hot. Miserably hot. I did a lot of worrying about what my friend was going through. We did stay in touch, via texting and some emails. Smart phones are wondrous devices. And through it all, there was no anger.

I find that situations make me reflect on the way things used to be, and the more I talk about them to my friends in constant contact... the more I realize that I was married to someone that no one else knew, at all really.

We have had some electricity issues here, in the house where I still live. We went away last year for a couple of days and came home to find that the big metal box that directs electricity to our home had given out, and so we spent many hot miserable hours (turns out this happened on the hottest day and night of the year LOL) waiting for the electric company to come and diagnose the problem (we only had half of whatever the amount of electricity is supposed to be coming to the house and that is a big deal if your appliances and a/c and everything needs all of the voltage to run...).

We have had storms that made the power go out for hours.

When we still lived in Tupelo, the stuff in the wall died and we had to have it all replaced, that happened in July which was very hot indeed!

So when I was thinking of my friend in the hot, I thought of the times when I was married and it was hot. And I noticed that my friend never texted angry words or sounded anything other than calm... like it happened, worse things happen to others all the time (funny enough, this is my normal reaction to the same types of situations). And then I would catch myself thinking of the hours of yelling that would accompany power outages at "our" house. I never understood how angry it would make Allen. We had no control over it, and the heat... it just felt worse to me to get upset and angry. It certainly didn't make me feel any cooler. And the angrier he got, the worse I felt because there was NOTHING I could do to make things better.

Yes I called MLG&W. No I couldn't make them fix it faster. Yes I knew it would be hard to sleep in the heat. Can't fix it.

I'm not going to say that I've never gotten upset over a situation that I had no control over, that would be a lie. But when the power goes out, I adjust. When it ices and snows and I still have to drive to work to care for the animals there, I leave really early and drive really slow. I don't get all mad and upset at the weather.

It's really hot and dry right now, and my godchildren are coming for the 4th of July. We hope to see fireworks, but they have already cancelled some displays that were scheduled for the weekend, so we may not see any. If we don't, it's ok. Everyone will live and we'll do something else. None of the adults will be mad over that at least.

I'm glad they are coming. July 4th is usually a holiday that I volunteer to work for someone else. No one swapped or traded holidays this year at work which is weird, but at least I'm having some company :).  When I was asked weeks ago what I normally did, I told the truth. Allen always worked so he could see the fireworks from the building he worked in. Loads of the employees would bring their families to watch, but he always told me not to come down. It always made me feel unwanted. And honestly sometimes when others would tell me what his company was doing for employees and families it would make me feel a bit like he was ashamed of me.

That may be silly, but I know for certain I was embarrassing to him from time to time. He would tell me. I asked the wrong questions, I laughed to loud... Sorry I didn't really know I was going in this direction.

I went to see Magic Mike this weekend with a girlfriend, and afterwards we went to O Charley's to eat. We laughed and guffawed and told stories to one another and objectified the men in that movie unashamedly! I had a blast. My girlfriend didn't mind me laughing at all, she laughed with me. No one was angry that I went to see the movie (why would anyone be, really... it's a movie). I like not living with anger, and embarrassment. I like being confident to be who I am. It's really really nice when my friends talk about how happy I am.

I love being Wonder Woman...

All Your Bad Days Will End

So the Flaming Lips are going to perform tomorrow afternoon in Memphis. One of their albums in particular helped me through some of the darkest days right after Allen died. The song above was on the Batman Forever. It was the song that introduced Allen and thus myself to the Flaming Lips (I mean, I think we'd all heard She Don't Use Jelly beforehand...).

A person's age makes them of age to do things like buy alcohol legally, but it doesn't teach them to drink responsibly. Life is full of things that shape who we are. There are people who go around being busy little ants and people who are carefree grasshoppers. There was a tiny window of time at the end of 2011 when I wanted to throw away every single bit of the person I was to become someone else. I'm glad that feeling passed. I'm not a grasshopper. I am an ant. And I am proud to be that way. It doesn't mean I never have fun, but it means I am smart about it. The craziest thing I did was to go to Arizona, but I did think about it, and very carefully. I don't regret any of it. It was the really jumping off point. It was ONE of the decisions that made it ok for me to acknowledge who I have been all along. I broke a lifelong pattern of bad decisions, I decided I alone had control of my future and that I was no longer going to be stepped on by people who called themselves my friends.

I gave myself my permission to let go of anyone who made me feel bad rather than build me up, I allowed new people into my life.

My life. That's what it is. Only I can make it good or bad. By the people I allow into it, and the decisions I make.

Milestones... small but significant

I passed a milestone today quite unexpectedly. I didn't even know this would be one, but I think it is and I think it's important!

I was meeting a client for a petsitting job and there were some questions that I answered that implied that I was no longer married, but not once did I say that my spouse was dead. And I certainly didn't use the phrase "he hung himself in our garage." As pitiful as it may sound, that phrase or "he's dead" or "he died" are all that I've been able to come up with so far. Tonight I carefully worded my answers so that I wouldn't call any extra attention to the fact that I was not currently married.

It felt great!

Wedding Anniversary

It was sixteen years ago today that I got married to my first husband. This is the first anniversary without him, but not the first to go uncelebrated as a couple. The anniversaries that we actually celebrated were years: 1, 5, 10.

Last year he was too depressed. And I was hurt, I wanted to be important and for the day to be special and celebrated in SOME way.

Today was nowhere near what I expected. The day started with an email from Allen's mother that freaked me out. It was nice, but it freaked me out. Then my mom called and left a message that I refuse to listen to because the voice transcription in my email made me sad to read it. I was very short tempered and what my sister told me was "hypersensitive" all morning. At lunch I posted on FB that it WAS the anniversary of the wedding and that I was ok in hopes of stopping people from contacting me with "that" tone in their voice because I cant stand it. And this afternoon I felt the funk lifting, I went to dinner with a GREAT girlfriend of mine and we laughed and talked for a few hours. It was GREAT. (and yes, I had A drink but that means only 1).

I thought this day was going to be SO MUCH WORSE than it was.

It really wasn't bad at all, I mean I really thought I'd be crying and depressed.

huh!

Yay me.

It's almost the date...

It's almost the date that used to be my wedding anniversary. People tell me that I can still call it that. I don't want to. I want some other words for it. Allen promised me after we got married that we'd celebrate the ones that ended with 5 and 0... barring the first. He said we didn't need to celebrate every year.

He didn't.

Last year was 15 years. We did not celebrate, he didn't feel like it.

I'm not saying I wanted a big gift, but I wanted the day to be special. We certainly argued about the date long enough. I originally wanted to get married on Halloween so we wouldn't be stuck expected to wear a white dress and a tux. I wanted it to be FUN. I wanted it to be us.  

I wanted to hear the words Happy Anniversary every year. I wanted to know it meant as much to him that we dedicated our lives to one another. I'd rather have had him forget the actual date than to just watch it go by.

When you think about it these are the ones we had to celebrate by his "rules": 1,5,10,15.

That's not very many.

I've always kind of felt bad about the not celebrating of our anniversary. It's a something I should have fought for. Maybe. 

Maybe it'll be easier because it'll be more normal?

It's weird because most days I don't really think about it. I guess I only thought about it today because I'm off work and noticed the date. 

Maybe that's why I had that dream the other day.

Bad Dreams

I had my first nightmare about Allen this morning. I'm staying in a fabulous condo on Mud Island and last night was the first night I couldn't get to sleep. I did have some things on my mind, but I didn't think I was that worried, I guess so LOL.

I kept waking up and laying down and finally fell asleep some time after midnight. I dreamt I went home to some basement apartment. Everything in it was white. It had windows that were short and up a the top of the walls and outside the windows were trees and the sun was shining. When I got home Allen was there. When I saw him I was ANGRY. I wanted to know how he could put me through everything I have been through. He didn't know what I was talking about. I told him the suicide, the fact that he was dead. He didn't understand why I told people he was dead. Then he said he'd have to kill himself now, because of me. Because I had already told everyone that he was dead. We had a massive fight. He tried to run out of the front door and I climbed out the window and beat him to the front door. I was determined not to let him do it, not to let him do it because of me.

I woke myself up crying.

I've been thinking, trying to decide all day what it might have meant. I'm thinking it just means I have some guilt, about not keeping him from harming himself. But I know it wasn't the answer. I know it wasn't going to be any sort of life for either one of us. I'm sure that it has something to do with the fact that I've talked to others with similar depressed spouse issues, and they have done what I did not.

I have two friends who've done it. And I chose not to. It's not bad or wrong, it just wasn't for us, and that's ok. I'm not wrong and I wouldn't change anything I did.