Addled.

Lately I've felt especially untethered.  Teetering.  Unbalanced.  Without roots.

I suppose this feeling could be attributed to the change in weather or lack of sunlight that is ubiquitous right now.  Or the looming holiday season ahead with all its accompanying busyness.  It seems that this time of year always has me feeling somewhat self-destructive.  I spend money I don't have on things I don't need.  I have no appetite and stop eating.  I sleep too much and then not at all.  I quit feeling any emotions and then grasp at anything that causes me to get the feels, however small or fleetingly, and then end up making bad choices.  In people, in words, in whisky, in general.

There is also a tiny bit of good that comes out of this time and that is a deepened sense of introspection. An increase of self-awareness.  But that, unfortunately, leads me to feeling even more off-kilter.

I'm keenly aware of how strange my life has become.

I was walking with a friend the other morning and I was trying to find a way to clearly express to her how I was feeling.  I searched for the words and found a few analogies that seemed fitting.  I told her to imagine what that it felt like if you had spent your whole life trying to put together a huge puzzle which you thought was a picture of a field of sunflowers but it was really a picture of a snowy mountain range instead.  All this time your were trying to use blue and white and grey pieces to make a yellow and green and brown picture and you were not even finished with the edges yet.  Or imagine if you tried to play Monopoly using only the CandyLand board and playing pieces.  Or think about trying to follow a recipe to bake a chocolate cake from scratch and the only ingredients you have in your kitchen are for making venison and vegetable stew.

That is how I feel.  

Like I'm ill-equipped to succeed in this world.  That my ideals and values are neither true or realistic.  I feel as if my life has been nothing more than a mirage.  An illusion of reality.  I feel as if I have been inadequately prepared for "the real world" and I'm too old to relearn what to do.

I mean, was there a class that I missed somewhere?  Did everyone else take this Real World 101 class and I was just building a rocket out of a large cardboard box because I tested TAG?  (This is actually a true event!)  Maybe I was reading a book during this particular class period?

It just seems like I'm the only person who cannot grasp the rules of life.  Everyone else is playing this game and I'm just standing on the sideline trying to figure out what the hell is going on.  What is the object of the game?  Where is the freaking ball?  Who is on which team?  Is someone keeping score?  Is that against the rules?  Do I need special equipment to play this game?  Am I being judged on my ability to play?  Does this uniform make my ass look huge?

Everyone else seems to get it.  And it's all foreign to me.

Just an Indentation.

I caught up on some yard work during the Indian Summer weather we were fortunate enough to have  a few weeks ago.  Pruned, replanted, tore out, weeded.  Just basic yard maintenance stuff.  I got pretty filthy and ended up with a few well-earned blisters on my hands.  Nothing a good shower and a thorough scrubbing of my hands with Lava soap couldn't fix.  And during that hand washing moment I noticed something.  There, on my ring finger, is the still-obvious ridge of where my wedding ring used to be.

I took my ring off a year after Bill died.  I wore it on a chain around my neck for a while.  I had his band re-sized to fit on my right hand a week after he died.  It will remain there.  But I'm not sure why I took off my own gold band.  Well, that's not totally true.  I removed it as sort of an experiment, trying out how it would feel to be naked of that symbol after so many years.  Probably a first step in living alone.  Or at least a first step in that direction.  There's a little more to this part of the story actually and I'm not up to telling it right now but trust me when I say that I took the ring off for the right reasons.

When I look at the indentation on my finger it makes me feel just how much being alone sucks.

Oh, I can be OK on most days.  I don't mind getting up in the morning by myself because Bill was only home in the mornings on the weekends.  There's nothing foreign to me about morning solitude.  And I can be pretty much alright in the course of the afternoon too.  I stay plenty busy at work or catching up at home.  I even do reasonably OK in the evening hours because prior to his death Bill had worked a strange shift that brought him home at night around 11:00PM.  Again, I was used to solitude in the evenings.  But, oh the nighttime.  Nighttime is a whole different story.

I don't think I will ever get used to it.

At the end of the day all the things I think of to talk about and no one here to listen to me.  No one to plan for the future with.  No one to dream up an adventure with.  No one to "remember when" with.  Hear a scary sound outside?  I'm the one who has to check it out now.  Make sure the fire is going, fill the coffee pot, set the mousetrap.  All me now too.

Sometimes I let myself remember a boring, typical evening from before.  But I quickly tuck it back away in my mind because the simple contentedness of such times makes my heart hurt.  When I absentmindedly go to twirl the ring on my finger (nervous habit) and realize that it's no longer there I am flooded with regrets and self-pity and hopelessness.  Funny how a little gold band (no diamonds for me--too high maintenance) can make me feel so helpless and sad.  Claustrophobic about life and choices and the future.

This life I have right now is not the life I anticipated ever having to live.  It is a far, far cry from the life we built together.  My entire identity was woven with the threads of "us."  I know that "letting go" is my only choice.  But I just haven't quite figured out how to actually do that.  How do you choose what parts to let go of and what parts should remain?  Can any parts remain?  Lots to think about.

Just a tiny indentation but it represents an entire world.