Widow's Voice

This Dark Night of the Soul

| Posted by:

http://widowsvoice.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/7775513012_44f0d9cfdb_n.jpgThis particular blog is one I don’t plan on editing or changing in any way.  It’s completely raw writing from the darkness of this night that I’m in.

I came in off the road not quite a week ago, right before Thanksgiving.  My PinkMagic trailer is parked outside my son’s house here in Arizona.  He recently moved in with his girlfriend, soon to be his wife, so I’m here at the house by myself.  Which is alright because I seem to feel alone whether I’m with my kids or literally on my own.

The dark night of the soul;  I’m very much there.  Not because the holidays make it worse, which people seem to think.  Chuck and I long ago stopped celebrating holidays so they don’t hold meaning for me.  No, this is the soul sick missing-ness that has enveloped me every day since he died.  Perhaps being still now is why I feel like I’m drowning. 

I know it’s better for me to be on the road, meeting people, driving…but there’s business I need to take care of here before I can go back out.  New tires on my car, a new tire for my T@b,  finances, seek out a counselor.  And yet, here I am, day 3 in bed because I picked up a horrid flu bug that brought with it the whole shebang of vomiting and diarrhea, dizziness, extreme weakness, a cough…everything.  So I can’t get anything done and I need to because I’m working under a time constraint.

I’m really tired.  Mentally and emotionally, and that has frozen me so that I don’t seem able to make the smallest decisions.  Even small steps seem impossible, and yet they must be made.

Yes, I miss Chuck more than ever now.  Don’t we all miss that one person who took care of us?  He nursed me through minor illnesses over the years, as I nursed him.   If one was down, the other got things done and that’s no longer true.  It’s up to me and I can’t get going.  Each time I gear myself up to get out of bed, get a shower, force some food down (the BRAT diet right now), I collapse inwards again.  I need the bed rest but don’t have time for bed rest.

God, I miss him.  I don’t want to do this any more without him.  It’s the most devastating thing I’ve ever done; continuing to get up each day without him.  Well-meaning people say loving things that don’t help.  No, he wouldn’t want me to be like this.  Yes, he’d want more for me.  One day at a time.  Just breathe.   It will be better one day.  It’s all meaningless.  I can’t see into tomorrow morning, never mind one day.

I want my life back.  I want my husband back.  And big deal to that, says Life.  He’s gone and not coming back and you have to fucking figure it out so get going. 

It feels like the rope snapped and there’s only the roughness of my claw marks keeping me from going over.  Suspended in air.  Suspended in time~

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~

TO LEAVE A COMMENT ON A BLOG, sign in to the comments section using your Facebook or Gmail accounts, or sign up for Disqus.