I am enough

I am a conflict. I have survived the things that would have leveled other people. I should have died on
April 16, 1975 the day my father died, but I survived. I should have died  January 31. 1991, the day my mother died but I survived. I should have died November 23,2013, the day my husband died, but I am still standing. Everyone said how strong I was, but they don't know the truth. I am not strong. I am not steel. I hide my feelings, because that is what I do. I put one foot in front of the other and do what I have to do. I am the poster child for "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps".
I am a conflict. I  have struggled with myself since I was a kid. I was always teased that I was too big, too tall, too quiet. As an adult, I have been told that I am too skinny, too short, too loud. I was always Johns daughter, Richards sister, Rolands wife, Stace and Kevins mom. I faded into the background, and I am sure that with all those labels, that no one actually knew my name. I was a good student, because when you are the daughter of a school teacher, that is what you do. Nothing less is accepted. I learned to work hard, because when you are the daughter of a farmer, that is what you do. Again nothing less is accepted.  Years ago I put a wall up around myself. I got along by insulating myself from comments and criticisms, I made a habit of criticizing myself before someone else could, or by laughing at myself, but deep down I heard the comments and they stuck. They are still stuck, they are a part of me. I will always be the little girl that never felt she was pretty enough, or thin enough, or smart enough or good enough. When you get told something often enough, even if the comment is made in a joking way, it becomes a part of you. These days we call this bullying, back then it was just teasing or being funny. It didn't matter how many times someone told me that I was really smart, or that I was a hard worker, or that I was really pretty, or that I was too thin, I didn't hear it, all I could hear was the voices in my head telling me what I had been told when I was younger, that I wasn't smart, pretty or thin or hard working enough. I have tried to tell myself that it doesn't matter, that I don't care. but it does matter and I do care. I care that when I look in the mirror all I see is a girl with unbalanced features, unruly hair, a nose that is too big, teeth that aren't pearly white. I see a woman that has to deal with a body that carries extra weight that manifests itself in a muffin top that no amount of shapewear can disguise. I envy women who are curvy in all the right places, women with body confidence, I've never had that. Sure there have been moments over the past 60 years that I was actually confident, but those were moments, small slices of time, hours or minutes and then my mind reverts back to what it has always held to be true, that I am not enough. I want to change that, to switch my mind around and accept that I am enough. I am pretty enough, I am thin enough, I am smart enough, I am strong enough, I am enough.

Moving on

I come here occasionally to let some frustration vent out or to just speak the words that I can't actually say to anyone. I just reread what was on my mind a couple weeks after my husband died almost 3 years ago. I don't remember writing those words but I do remember feeling those feelings. Some those feeling haven't left me. Although a lot of the pain has lessened there are still times that the grief will sneak up on me. Unfortunately I can't make myself cry. I envy people who can cry at the drop of a hat. Not those that cry to elicit a response, not those that cry to make people feel sorry for them but those that genuinely cry. I feel that need, I can feel it deep down in my soul, pain crying out to be heard. But I get nothing. Sure there are the occasional tears which well up and drop for a second and then vanish. That is not the cleansing type of cry that I feel that my soul is crying out for. I have heard people talk about heartbreak. For a long time I didn't understand about the physical feeling of heartbreak, to me it was just a word used to describe grief. I was wrong, it is a feeling, a physical symptom of extreme grief. A feeling that the heart is indeed breaking or so hurt that it feels like it could break. I have experienced the loss of my father, my mother and now my husband. I don't say this to gain sympathy only to share that I do know what it feels like to experience loss, the loss of a loved one. These losses have affected me, more so now than when I was younger. When I lost my dad and my mom, I had my husband to lean on to help me carry the burden of grief. When I lost my husband, even though I had my children, it was different. I had to carry this burden on my own. I had to make my own way through the mine field of grief. People can tell you what they went thru dealing with the loss of the person that you shared your life with but until you experience it there are no words to accurately describe what you go thru. Each persons journey is different. My husband and I often joked that I had no heart or was coldhearted. I am sure that that is what I appeared to be like to many people. I went back to work after a week and although it might have been considered dedication to a job, it was more of a coping mechanism. I can't sit around and dwell on what was so I went back to work. Looking back I probably should have taken more time for me, but that at the time I did what I thought I should do. Yes, I am sure that it appeared that I was dealing well with my grief, you can hide a lot behind a smile. I was getting on with life, but postponing dealing with the grief.
Grief comes in stages. What they don't tell you is how long it takes to work thru those stages. Some come fairly quickly, some are sneaky and don't show up for a long time. Some stages never happen, some happen even before the loss, if it is the case of a terminal illness. I have heard that people will say "why me?", I said "why not me? or "why not him?" There was not a reason that my husband should have been diagnosed with terminal cancer, but cancer happens. Just like life happens, cancer happens. My husband didn't do anything to deserve cancer, he lived his life, he enjoyed his life, he lived mostly on his own terms, life was good up until the last 8 months of it. But he endured, he perservered. He made the best of a bad situation. We laughed, we cried, but we had hope, at least on the outside. We both knew the outcome was not going to be good.

Tears soup

Pain by its nature should be something that can be described as a hurt. Something that you can take a pill for. Not this pain, this numbness. It's a pain that has no pain but hurts none the less. You can't describe the emptiness, the loneliness. Unfortunately it has to be experienced to get the full effect. It's a sneaky kind of pain popping up when you least expect it. A song, a picture, a word, a scent are all things that can make it surface. I likened it to a computer file transfer, memories filling up the hole in my heart. Unfortunately I have more than 40 years of memories to relive, to fill this hole. I am going to be hurting for a long time.