Widow's Voice

Me…Sighing~

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Tired.  Exhausted.  Done in.  Over it.  Finito.

That pretty much describes me where I am right now. 

Not because of the grief, necessarily, though I guess it springs from the place inside of me where grief lives.

Mostly it has to do with all the ugliness of the world at large, both domestically and globally, and all of that makes me miss my husband more than ever.

All of that when I already am tired from all the grief, you know?

I don’t even watch the news; I knew long ago that the intensity of bad shit every day was no good for me when I’m already not feeling it. 

But even if I don’t watch it, I know about it through headlines or hearing people talk, or seeing a newsfeed on face book (that harbinger of joy and yuck, both). 

Politics, ISIS, shootings, the RNC, the DNC, people screaming at each other, screaming at me, it seems sometimes.

That person who was next to me, that person who listened to me sound things out for myself, that person who would let me vent by doing what I called my “R and R” (ranting and raving)…that person who would help me reason my way through shit, who gave me feedback, who could talk me into another world, that person…Chuck…he’s gone and I don’t know where to turn now.  And that void looms large on most days, and the loneliness that comes with it, looms even larger.

I do realize, of course, that I have no power over any of the world stuff in a big way that counts world-wide.  All I can do is love the person next to me and be as kind as possible to those I meet each day.

But the world at large seems to be falling apart on a daily basis in a way that I’ve never seen before and I feel more threatened as I go about my daily living than I ever have before.

Someone asked me the other day if I was afraid to live as I do, solo on the road, driving all over the country.  Especially now.

I could be afraid, I guess.  And it isn’t that I think the world is filled with lollipops and tulips and fun shit.  I’m fully aware that bad people are everywhere and evil is a fact of life.  But what does it get me to be afraid?  What can I do about most anything that might happen to me out there?  Being afraid takes energy and doesn’t keep things from happening.

So, I strive to be as situationally aware as I can be.  I look around me, I watch people (but not suspiciously).  If I’m ever in a situation where I feel the heebie-jeebies, I remove myself from the situation as quickly as possible (though that feeling has never yet come over me). 

But fear will get me nowhere except more exhausted and overwhelmed than I already am.

But don’t you just miss miss miss and miss more, your special someone, more than ever, when the world around you is collapsing with ugliness and it’s hard to find your feet anymore to even know where you’re standing?

I know I do~

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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