Widow's Voice

A Day Like Every Other. Except~

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Today was an ordinary day like every other day has been since Chuck died.

Except that, today, I finally made a decision that I need to move my body. I need to get stronger. I need to move.

I’m 4.5 years since my world incinerated, and every so often I’ve made concentrated attempts at exercising.  Honestly, I can always find excuses to not work out, in the best of times.  When Chuck was alive, he and I exercise walked, no matter where we were.

And then he died and I gave up mostly.  I mean, seriously, what was the point? He ate well, he exercised, he took vitamins and supplements and did everything right and then cancer got him and he fucking died 3 weeks later.  I remember the day after he died, taking the bag where we kept all those vitamins and supplements and throwing them away, filled with rage and hopelessness and fuck yous (to the vitamins, because that’s a rational response.

My eating is still shit and I don’t know how much that will change.  Except that I intend to exercise obsessively and that will keep me from sitting on my butt and eating chocolate.

Full-time living on the road makes exercising regularly and healthy nutrition more of a challenge than I’ve been able to take on since his death. Add into it the lack of energy and focus and, I don’t know…care? and it’s a done deal that I’m not going to make much effort.

Here’s my bottom line on exercising, for me.  We’re all going to die no matter what we do, right?  Cancer or some other illness will get us (I tend to think heart attack for myself.  Somewhere in me is a belief that, if one partner dies of cancer, the other dies of a heart attack.)  So, none of it really matters, in my book.

BUT.

I don’t want to end up fat and unable to fit my body into my seat to drive, or not fit onto the bed in my trailer. I don’t want to weigh more than my trailer.  And if I’m going to get out there and write books and offer workshops and shit, I want to look good.

I’m going to exercise so that I look good.  Period. It’s as shallow a reason as that.  I don’t give a damn about being healthy. It’s about looking good. Back to basics and keep it simple.

So, I joined a gym with a monthly membership, since I move around so much.  I’ll start tomorrow and plan on killing it with exercise. So that I look good.

I also bought myself some new lingerie. I haven’t bought any new lingerie since Chuck died 4.5 years ago.  What’s the point, right? Nobody to look at it but me.  I bought it primarily because I know Chuck would have insisted on it and he would hurt for me that I’m wearing raggy underwear. What if I get in a crash? Like our moms used to warn us about happening.  If that happens, I want to have something halfway decent on.

So, that was my day.  I joined a gym so that I can get stronger to carry this widowhood and I bought some new lingerie so that I can look good under my clothes while I’m widowing.

Along with these two things comes a hearty fuck widowhood.  I’m going to own you, instead of you owning me~

About Alison Miller

My beloved husband Chuck died while we were full timing on the road. We’d rented a condo for our stay in southern CA, and I had to leave 3 weeks after his death. All I knew at that time was that I had to find a way to continue traveling on my own, because settling down without him made me break into a cold sweat. I knew that the only place I’d find any connection to Chuck again was out on the roads we’d been traveling for our last 4 years together. I knew nobody out on the road, I knew grief was a great isolator, and I knew I had to change the way I traveled without him, to make it more emotionally bearable for me. So I bought a new car, had a shade of pink customized for it, bought a tiny trailer and painted the trim in pink, learned how to tow and camp, and set out alone. My anxiety was through the roof, and all I knew to trust was the Love that Chuck left behind for me. I found Soaring Spirits early on, thank god, and the connections I made through SS helped ground me to some extent. I needed to know that other widow/ers were out there in my world, because I felt so disoriented and dislocated. Through Soaring Spirits, as the miles added up, my rig taking me north, south, east and west, I found community. I found sanity…or at least I learned that if I was bat shit crazy, I was in good company, and realizing that ultimately saved my sanity. PinkMagic, my rig, is covered with hundreds of names of loved ones sent to me by my widowed community, and I know it isn’t visible to the naked eye, but I’ll let you in on a secret…she actually illuminates Love as I drive down the many roads in our country, and I can see it through my side view mirror. Love does, indeed, live on~

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