40 days and 40 nights. Sometimes that’s how grief has felt along this journey. No one quite understands the impact that first grief flood has on you until you find your floating around and all the land is gone. Nothing but a horizon. You feel helpless, alone and lost.
It has taken lots of navigating through the storms to finally find a feeling of safe harbor. The great flood recedes, and the shores return to their normal tides. Up and down and up and down enough that grief tides are predictable. Once something is predictable, it loses value and you move about your day without it effecting you. I’ve grown through grief ground and have firmly walked upon it’s gravel. I have a new strong foundation and solid footing – or so I thought.
These past two weeks have been wrought with grief, not at my loss of my late partner Clayton but at a sudden loss of a friend. That friend is still alive but they deceived many and suddenly disappeared. No regular texts. No regular calls. All the energy put into supporting someone was absorbed and used to manipulate others under the cloak of authenticity and integrity. Today I grieve the death of someone who was never really alive. Today I grieve our false friendship.
Why does this make sense for a widowed blog? We the widowed lose the person who completes us and after the loss it takes time to rebuild. One of the biggest hurdles has been to trust that others won’t just up and leave. I have a small circle of close friends that hold more value to me now than ever because I am widowed. I have appreciation and gratitude for these connections, and I thrive around the authenticity and honesty. To hear that someone in my close circle AC (After Clayton) has secretly concealed and crafted a double life hurts.
At the end of the day, I know people have to make decisions for themselves and I remind myself that it’s about my “friend” and not about me. However, I have the right to feel how I feel. I have the right to hurt how I hurt. I have the right to wonder how someone could know my story and pull the wool over my widowed eyes.
I might never know the answers. Fame and fortune certainly produce fakes. At the end of the day, I know that this will be another one of grief’s gifts. I see them faster and faster. Less of the “whys” and more of the clarity. Comparison is the thief of joy if you are jealous but, in this instance, comparison is Robin Hood – My truth and authenticity hold more value than ever. I don’t talk much about religion so that my words help as many as possible, but I know in my heart that all things happen for a reason and actions have consequences.
I’ll let the Universe continue to unfold knowing that Greed and God do not hold hands, but God and Grief do…
