It's funny, how one part of my life is going like gangbusters, and it makes every other part of my life seem even worse than it did when everything sucked.
Over the past month or six weeks or so, I'm back at work: competent, sharp, staying on top of my schedule and my deliverables, giving presentations and knocking them out of the park... and, much to my surprise, coding.
I've deployed two workflows to our production data governance software since I returned from my leave of absence after Doug died. And in both cases, every line of code was written under the guiding hand of our vendor's workflow expert.
But I've done plenty of debugging of my own over the past month, and this week - after deploying the second workflow last weekend - I began working on a new one, all by myself. And I'm making great progress. This is an enormous achievement: learning to code at 55 is not typical (yes, I can write SQL code; no, I don't view that as programming, even though technically it sorta kinda is).
And last weekend, I read a book: a friend's novel called The Witch (author: Fred Anderson; it's available on Kindle and it is absolutely terrifying and you should go buy it right now). For the first time in ages, I read a book!
I should be proud of myself for these meager accomplishments (that feel far more herculean than they really are), and I am. But it's hollow. The better I do at work, the emptier my real life feels in comparison. I'm used to having to cheer myself on; I'm used to giving myself a pat on the back for a job well done. But, for four years, four months, and four days, I had the best cheerleader in the world with me, and that was so much better. Yeah, I know I could call and brag to my son, or my sister, or any number of friends, and they'd be happy for me. But that's the thing: Doug wasn't happy for me; he was happy with me, because my success was our success. It may seem a fine distinction, but I promise you: it's bigger than it seems.
I take very little joy out of success that belongs only to me. I've been there and done that for many, many years. I loved sharing the good moments. I miss having a loving partner. I miss Doug.
I'm re-watching The Handmaid's Tale to refresh my memory before the next season starts, and I had to pause and cry like a crazy person when Emily stabbed Aunt Lydia and pushed her down the steps. Why, you ask? Because Doug LOVED Aunt Lydia, and for MONTHS after that episode aired, he kept saying he was going to be furious if they killed her off. I have to point out here that I don't mean Doug loved Ann Dowd (the actress who plays Aunt Lydia); I mean he had a thing for Aunt Lydia, the character. I won't even pretend to try to understand the weirdness of that, but it was a great source of amusement for us both. I cried because he's never going to find out what happens next; I cried because we would debrief after every episode, analyzing what happened and speculating on what would happen next. I cried because he doesn't get to do that anymore, and neither do I.
Where was I? Oh, yeah - somewhere, I can't recall now if it was Season 1 or Season 2, Fred Waterford says, "Every love story is a tragedy if you wait long enough." How very true, except that I didn't have to "wait" very long at all.
I'm lonely. So very, very lonely. Lonely for someone who wants to travel with me, and tell me the minutiae of his every day and hear the minutiae of mine, and sleep next to me, and wake up with me, and cook together, and run errands together, and build a life together.
The pain of missing Doug is still always there, and I imagine it will never go away. But hot on the heels of that pain is the pain of having SO MUCH LOVE to give, and no one to give it to and no one to return it.
In a way, this was all easier during those long months when I was still stupid. At least then, I didn't have anything to celebrate, and so I didn't feel the pain of having no one to celebrate with. But now, it punches me in the face every time I have a great work day. My success doesn't do a damn thing for anyone but me. Considering how fond we are of suggesting that no one is an island, it's astonishing how very wrong that is: I am an island, untethered from the rest of humanity. Oh, I can visit now and then, but my life is now mine alone.
Some people see that as something to celebrate; if only I were one of them.
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