I wonder if I’ll ever wake up again.  Wake up to the point where I feel anything besides numbness or pain or his absence.

I wonder if I’m okay or if this grief has become complicated.  Lately I’ve been reading some articles that suggest that it might be.  Except that I only really meet one or two of the criteria and there’s upwards of ten.  So maybe I’m okay and normal.

I wonder when I’ll care again.  When I’ll feel passionate about life again.  Or, having gone through the fucking devastating grief of my husband’s death, any and everything I ever experience will be tinged against this backdrop. 

I wonder at the courage it takes for any of us, man or woman, to fall in love again, knowing what we know now.  And yet, I want to be in love again.  I loved being in love with my husband.  I’m in love with him still, more than ever because he’s been absent for so long.  I don’t know how well that would work with another man….

I wonder what it would be like, being in love with a man not my husband.  Weird, right?  Except that from all I’ve been told, and what I read, it can (will) be just as natural a feeling as it was (is) with Chuck.

I wonder how on earth a man could fall in love with me when I have none of my spirit, none of my former spontaneity, none of my zest for life.  I see a ghost staring back at me from the mirror when I take a moment to look at myself, which is really only a few minutes each morning to make sure that the blush I’ve applied isn’t making clown cheeks.  How on earth could an emotionally healthy man fall in love with that?

I wonder how on earth I could ever find another emotionally healthy man.  Chuck was in AA, which meant not only had he stopped drinking, he’d addressed his various issues from his upbringing and his first marriage.  He was a together guy and I trusted him implicitly.  How the hell do I find that again?

I wonder how people see me.  My kids tell me what they see, and my friends do, and people who follow my blog do, and what they tell me and what I feel inside creates such dissonance that it just doesn’t compute.  You probably know what I mean, don’t you?

I wonder if it will ever be real to me that Chuck is dead and gone and no longer in my life and I may or may not see him again when I die.  I used to believe that there was something more.  And then Chuck died and every belief I ever had flew out the window and disappeared.  Fuck.

I wonder how it is that I’m still alive when I really do believe that people can die of a broken heart and I was so fucking sure I would and….I haven’t.  Fuck.

I wonder what most people that I interact with on any kind of basis would think if they knew to any degree what was going on in my head while we’re having conversation; shallow or deep-doesn’t matter.  Because I’ve realized that I can absolutely carry two thoughts in my head at the same time. On the outside, I’m talking about fill in the blank, and on the inside my brain is flashing back to places he and I were, conversations we had, kisses that we kissed, his final weeks.  I’m speaking to you about the weather and in my head I’m saying he’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone.  You’d never know it from my outside though.

I wonder about the exact formula for letting go.  We’re supposed to let go of the grief, let go of the angst, let go, let go, let go.  I’m all for letting go.  Please tell me the formula for doing that and I’ll do it.  And please know that it isn’t enough to say be in the moment (because, believe me, I’m fully in the moment because I can’t bear to think of the future and the past has so much pain).  And telling myself that the pain I’m feeling is only a feeling doesn’t do a damn thing.  Of course it’s only a feeling, one that slices and dices and leaves me bleeding.   Please give me a practical formula for letting go.

I wonder how I’ve managed to live this long without him.

And mostly I wonder how long I’m going to have to live without him.