Well, it's here. Doug didn't get to live to see what we thought would be the first of many wedding anniversaries even though he wanted to live. I'm stuck here living through the first anniversary of the day he died, even though I don't want to be alive.
After his first wife died, Theodore Roosevelt wrote this in his journal:
Same, Mr. President. Same.
Now, you could say that he went on and did great things with the remainder of his life, and that would be true. He was also 26 years old. And yes, it's different, even though you probably don't believe that.
It's been one year. Traditionally, one year marks the end of the official mourning period. In the modern era, it seems that the cultural expectation is that widow(er)s will be "recovered" far sooner than that. And over that year, I've watched others around me navigate the experience of grief with SO MUCH grace, and warmth, and hope, and kindness.
I am not one of those people.
I am utterly broken. I knew it on Day One, but no one believed me. "It takes time!" "Be gentle with yourself!" "It's a journey!" I don't know what any of those things mean, really. Time does nothing but take me further away from the man I love and the happy, vibrant, competent, loving woman I used to be. Being gentle with myself? What the fuck even IS that? As for this being a journey, it hasn't been. It was an immediate, one-way trip straight to the depths of hell with no escape.
I work, badly. I take care of my animals, badly. I occasionally do script reads with friends - some of which I've done okay with, and others... not so much. But theatre - even virtual theatre - is really the only thing remotely resembling an outlet that I have, so I do it whenever anyone takes enough pity on me to ask me to participate.
My house looks like a crack house (minus the actual crack). I don't really bother putting anything away, and I can't remember the last time I did any cleaning beyond the litterboxes and the dishes, because why go to the trouble? I'm the only one who has to look at the piles of clothes, and empty boxes from stuff I've bought, and the dirty sink and toilet and shower, and the piles of dog and cat fur, and the dust. There are obscenities that I rage-painted all over the walls of my hallway (gems like "LIFE IS A FUCKING CURSE," and "KILL ME ALREADY," and "LOVE IS HELL"). Soon I'll run out of room and then I'll be painting in areas where it'll be visible to anyone looking through the front door or window. I don't care.
My sister asked me the other day why I don't just paint on canvas. At the time, I couldn't articulate an answer, but I have one now; two, actually. The first is that I'm making my external environment match my inner self: ugly, scarred, and obscene. The second is even darker: my rage - a constant in my life since that ill-fated trip to Georgia - is destructive. My hands are constantly bruised from hitting the walls or tables or my desk. I can't tell you how many things I've broken in fits of rage in the past few months. I destroy my house because it's a proxy for my real target: what I truly want is to destroy myself and end this misery. But I promised I wouldn't do that, so I destroy my house instead.
With every new death that I hear about, I rage more: these people want to live, dammit! They have lives worth living, and partners who will be lost without them, and it's not fair that they have to die and I have to survive just to suffer.
Aside from the rage, there's the loneliness, which never goes away. And it's not just Doug that I'm missing: I used to have people in my life who got me. They were comfortable talking to me about anything. They knew where I was coming from. They got my jokes, especially the dark ones. I don't have that anymore. NO ONE understands me. They say that they do, but they don't. I'm not angry or sad or upset about that - I get why no one understands me, but it doesn't change the fact that I am completely, totally, permanently alone, no matter how many times people tell me that I'm not.
And that's true even in the widowed community: most widows my age were married a long time, so they can't relate to my experience of losing my husband as a newlywed. Most newlywed widows are quite young and therefore statistically very likely to remarry, so they can't relate to my knowledge that the one brief taste of love I had with Doug is all I'll ever have. Even among "my people," I'm isolated.
No one gets me now. I AM alone.
A life without love simply isn't worth living. And yeah, I know: there are lots of kinds of love. But there's only one kind that doesn't require me to sleep alone every night, and that's the one I had and the one I want. No other kind of love comes close.
I don't really talk at all to anybody other than colleagues at work (kinda impossible to avoid that), my son, very occasionally my sister, and fellow actors at script reads. And that's for everyone's protection, because at any given moment I'm merely a breath away from a blind, screaming rage, and I am NOT exaggerating; frankly, I'm surprised the neighbors haven't yet called the cops thinking I'm being murdered. I'm exhausted after every conversation because it takes so much energy to hold back the rage - and it doesn't always work (just ask the few people I DO still talk to). The truth is that I'm not fit company for the living, because I'm already dead. I'm hateful, and bitter, and resentful, and I have nothing in my emotional reserves to give to anyone. All I have is pain and rage; they're all-encompassing, and they leave no room for anything else. Hell, it would be a blessing to everyone in my life if I just dropped dead, because they could finally stop worrying about me.
I know that I'm letting everyone down, including Doug, and including me. I'm sorry. I know that Doug would hate me now. I hate me now. But this is who I am. It's not changing, no matter how hard I try.
And I HAVE tried, y'all. I swear, I really have tried. But nothing works. Nothing helps. A fleeting laugh does not a meaningful life make. A good script read does not give me anything approaching joy. There's nothing left to try. I'm a failure at putting my life back together. I've done it successfully, over and over and over again throughout my life, but not this time. There's nothing left in the tank; this was one heartbreak too many, and a heartbreak too big. There's no fixing this, and there's no making a life despite it, because the only life I can make still leaves me alone and longing for the one thing I can't have, and living is just not worth the trouble without that one thing.
It's been a year. And there has been not one day, not one experience, not one moment of the past year that I can look at and say, "THAT was worth sticking around for." I do what I have to do because I'm too chickenshit to do anything else, but make no mistake: time hasn't healed; not even a little. And I'm not living; not even a little. All I want is to stop hurting. But I haven't. And it's clear that I won't until my shitty, lonely, miserable excuse for a life ends. Something essential inside me broke when Doug died; I can't pick up the pieces because there are no pieces to pick up. That part of me isn't in pieces; it's gone. And there's no life without it, because that piece was my humanity.
Trying to look to the future doesn't help either. The other day I thought it would be lovely to go to the beach. That lasted all of a second before I remembered I'd be doing it without Doug, so what's the point? Even from a purely practical perspective, beach vacations are out, because I don't even fucking have someone to put sunblock on my back. REALLY think about that: something as simple as a trip to the beach is now off the table for me because I'll end up with sun poisoning because I'm alone. And what's the point of making memories when I have no one to share them with? What's the point of packing up shit to go away when there's nobody to share the packing, and the driving, and the experience? I am all alone. And there's absolutely no reason to think that will ever change.
I've lost more than five years of my life. A year since he died, yes. But more than five years gone with nothing to show for them but far too few pictures and this agony that's with me every waking minute. I say that because all those memories with Doug are... they're only mine now. And when I forget some little detail of an experience we had together, it's gone. Because he's not here to to help fill in those gaps in my memory. Other widow(er)s can take joy from their memories, but not this girl: each happy memory with Doug is like another rip in my soul, because all it does is taunt me with what was stolen from us.
It's been a year. I'm not exactly giving up, although it feels like useless effort. I try and I try and I try and I get nowhere. I'm too broken to find another partner - no sane man would want anything to do with me. And even if I weren't broken, the odds are so stacked against me that I'm probably likelier to catch Covid than I am to have someone to love again. And it's canon in the widowed community that the second year is worse than the first. MY GOD, how can I do another year WORSE than the one I just endured?
And life without that just isn't worth the trouble to me. It's too lonely. It's too empty. You may disagree, but I can assure you that the possibility of decades of celibacy and loneliness while I watch all the people around me, happy with their long marriages that I'll never have... well, I'd love to say I can be happy for others' happiness, but I've lost that too. It's not that I want anyone else to suffer (I don't), and I don't begrudge anyone else their happiness, but I can't take pleasure in their joy. And yeah, I know that speaks volumes about who I am now, and I know it's not good. I DON'T KNOW HOW MANY MORE WAYS I HAVE TO ARTICULATE HOW DOUG'S DEATH HAS RUINED ME BEFORE PEOPLE GET IT: I'm a horrible, hateful, miserable, bitter person now, forced into an existence that has zero joy and zero hope to get any. And despite what some people would say, nothing I do seems to change that.
Sometimes I think the only smart thing for me to do is sell this house, cut ties with everyone, and move someplace where I don't know anybody. Because even if I DO someday manage to heal to the point where I'm consistently functional, no one who's known me during this time will ever be able to look at me or relate to me normally again. And no one will be able to forget how wretched I've been to myself and everyone around me. I don't blame them for that; it's just reality.
I'm sorry that I'm not stronger. I'm sorry that the death of my love has changed me into someone hateful and someone he would have hated and whom I hate. I'm sorry that I can't do what so many other people have managed, but it's abundantly clear that I can't.
So I'm going to continue to do what I have to do to kill time until time finally takes mercy on me and returns the favor, or until a fucking miracle happens and I can actually live again.
