Friday, September 29, 2006

Normal

So, a close friend left me a message on my cell phone yesterday. In a serious sounding voice she says "Tamsen. You have to call me." then hangs up. When she doesn't answer her phone, I begin to worry. By the time she calls me back, I'm a nervous wreck. I've convinced myself that her boyfriend or a member of her family has died. I feel nauseous, and I've already planned out the phone message I'm going to leave for work, telling them that I had to go to LA to be there for her. In the end, all she wanted to tell me was that she'd run into one of our old friends at work.

I just want to be normal. I want to be care-free and young and stupid and drunk, like your twenties are supposed to be. I don't want to be 26 and feel 48 anymore. I don't want to feel like all the important parts of me are dead before I ever really got a chance to live. I want to go to bed at night and not spend three hours staring at the ceiling wishing my dead husband was there to tell me not to cry. I want to meet new people and not think, "you have no idea, do you? Just you wait... just wait until that long black train comes to pick up someone you love... then you'll know..." I want to go out to dinner with friends and not feel compelled to talk about life and death. I want the trivial to seem important again. I want my family to not be broken and hurt. I want to have somewhere to go on the weekends and not hate Sunday. I want to go to the movies or out to eat and not resent being there. I want to feel like life has meaning again.

No, you know what? I want to start over with a whole new life, a whole different set of choices and memories. Or I want my old life back, in the month between Thanksgiving and New Years, when things were the best they'd ever been. Or I want to die, to go Home and be with him, where I'm supposed to be. I want something, anything other than this! I JUST WANT MY GODDAMNED HUSBAND BACK! But you can't start over, can you? There are no brand new beginnings. But I hear everyone can start today and write a brand new ending. I guess that means asking how you want the story to end from here... where do you hope the future goes? I don't fucking know. I don't fucking care. All I know is that I wish I was like all the other people my age, the ones who feel like the world is theirs for the taking, the ones who are full of hope and optimism and blind faith that they'll get everything they ever wanted and never lose it. I just want to be normal.

Thursday, September 28, 2006

Of Snails, Ink and Monty


I got this tattoo about two weeks ago at the SkinFactory in Las Vegas, courtesy of the wonderful NickHole. I know the picture looks a little crooked, but that's just because I was trying to take the picture myself - behind my back. I think if you click on the picture you can get a bigger version of it to show up...

I got a snail, because CJ's always kind of been referenced with snails in our group. When we were first going out he'd make up stories all the time about this friend of his, who happened to be a secret agent snail. I would laugh until I cried as we made up stories about this snails James Bondesque adventures (I'd tell you the agent snail's name, but then I'd have to kill you...) CJ always used to draw snails when he was doodling, God only knows why. Over the years I came to associate snails with him so much that I always had to stop and save them if they were in the sidewalk so they wouldn't get stepped on. I also bought a tiffany glass-style night light in the shape of a snail. During the phases of our life when CJ and I were living apart it brought me comfort. And now it still serves that purpose, I guess. Interesting factoid of the day: the number phi (not pi, but phi) is considered the "divine ratio" or "golden ratio" because of the perfection of it's properties, and it is often represented by a nautilus (snails) shell.

NickHole put the blue flower on my left, because that's my married side. I've heard of widows who put tattoos on their right side because their spouse was "always right there" or was their "right hand guy". Some get them on the left because they "left" us or because we wear our rings on the left. I got mine where it is because I know CJ's always got my back... no matter how far apart we may be.

I think she did a great job on the tattoo, but I made the mistake of having it a bit too high - it should actually sit about three inches lower than where it is. But it's not like you can return a tattoo, you know? "Excuse me... can we just move this down a little?" I was kind of beating myself up about the whole thing after I got home. I was just a bit depressed in general, thinking about how I messed it up and how CJ probably would have thought it was stupid... So I was going to check my comics before I went to bed, and this was the first one I came across. It's from a strip called 9 Chickweed Lane. The old guy in the photo is this crazy old farmer who calls himself Thorax. He believes he's a higher being from another planet and that he talks to God. According to Thorax, God's real name is Monty.


I think it was CJ's way of telling me he liked the tattoo. And his way of saying that he's always got my back. And of course, reminding everyone that he's a God (cocky bastard =]). I have another small tattoo of a ladybug. I named the ladybug Sid after Sidhartha (Buddha's real name for you trivia buffs ;-). So, I've decided to name the snail Monty.

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Intimate Details

This is kind of an awkward and embarrassing topic for me, very personal... so please bear with me if this makes you uncomfortable.

The worst thing about being a widow/er is the loss of love. Of course you miss friendship, companionship, someone to take up the other half of the bed, all the extra clothes and dishes to wash. Someone to take care of and someone to take care of you. But mostly you miss the intimacy. When you have a great marriage, it becomes something that goes far beyond friendship. It's having someone who knows you. Knows what kind of food you like and don't like. Knows that you're just going to love a certain movie or book. Knows all your dirty little secrets and harbored wishes. Knows exactly what you're thinking when you raise your eyebrows like that. Knows not only how to make you feel better when you're down, but also knows how to make you livid in zero to sixty. Knows what it means when you put on that little black dress (and probably can guess exactly what you have on under it =P). When your spouse dies, it's not only traumatic, it's extremely disorienting. You've had this constant, intense connection for so long, and it's almost impossible to function without it. Suddenly no one knows you anymore. No one understands you, and no one understands what you're going through.

I remember that whenever CJ and I would go out somewhere, if I took too long to get ready or was getting worried that what I was wearing looked bad, he'd look at me and say "Who are you trying to impress?". If I only really cared about what he thought, and he thought I was pretty, then who cared about the rest? That boy was incredibly good for my self esteem, because he always accepted me for me, and even liked me if I wasn't wearing make-up or hadn't shaved my legs that week. He wouldn't let me say bad things about myself (like calling myself fat or stupid or incapable). He thought I was amazing, and wouldn't let me or anyone else say otherwise about his wife.

The problem is, without our lovers constant acceptance and affection, it's a bit harder to maintain self esteem. (It's very difficult to keep momentum if it's you that you are following). For the first time in ten years, I feel like I really have to worry about how everyone else sees me or thinks about me. Being widowed young is a very unique experience. The person you thought you were going to spend the rest of your life with is gone. It's as if you had your date for the prom all set months in advance. Then they call you the night of and cancel, leaving you to decide if you'll stay at home alone feeling sorry for yourself , or try to be brave and go to the dance alone anyway. Either way, it's a horrible choice compared to the one you had. You don't want anyone else, you certainly don't want the trouble of having to find anyone else... but you don't want to spend the next fifty years eating Rice-a-Roni alone with your cat, either. It's a horrible Catch 22.

Even worse than the general feeling of loneliness and outsider-ness is the desire for physical contact. We have a phrase for it in the widow/er community. It's called skin hunger. Let me be clear: you don't want anyone else to touch you, you certainly don't want to date or be single. But you've gotten so used to having someone there all the time; for hugs, for kisses, for sex, for hand-holding, for movie-snuggling and ear-nibbling. Suddenly, you can't be close to anybody. There's no one to turn to, lean on, make love to. You are truly severed - mind, body and soul. You come to yearn for simple human contact: a connection of minds, a moment of understanding, the brush of hands. But the yearning makes you feel like a bad person: a cup of weak and a handful of pathetic with a dash of guilty and unfaithful for seasoning.

We lose so many things, as young widows. But, being young, it's assumed we have so much life left. It is a common complaint among my fellows that people, trying to be supportive, will say, "Look on the bright side! You're young, you're attractive! You'll find someone else, no problem!". Yeah. Screw you and the optimism train you rode in on. They just don't understand that from our perspective, we had everything. Then we lost it before we even got to enjoy it. While it's true (it has to be true) that life goes on, it's very difficult to see that from our tortured and short-sighted perspective.

In large part, being a widow is a multi-year process of redefinition. Regarding sex, this is a very tricky process. I don't' know what it means to be sexy without CJ. I don't know what it means to be a woman without him there to counterpoint the alternative. I know what it means to be a wife, a role and a definition I loved; but now I'm not a wife anymore. So now I have to learn what it means to be a woman in a vacuum. How in the world am I supposed to learn that? I don't know how to date... more important, I don't know how to be datable. I don't know how to read other men, I don't know the rituals for flirting, I don't know what colors are in this Fall, I don't know at what length a skirt goes from stodgy to sexy to slutty... I don't know anything. And that's just the beginning! What happens if I make it through all that!?! I don't know how to be with another guy, if you know what I mean (wink, wink; nudge, nudge). We had a great sex life. And really? I don't care how "lonely" it gets, I don't think I really want to go through all the trouble of learning someone else's style or teaching them mine. (Just another one of those little side benefits of being with someone who really knows you... wink, wink; nudge, nudge; knowhatImean?) I never dated anybody but CJ. People say they don't know how "the game is played" nowadays, but I never learned it in the first place. Even more than that, I'm afraid to learn.

I hate being lonely, I hate being without my CJ. And between the guilt of even thinking about ever being with someone else and the incredible terror at having to undergo the process of dating - the rice-a-roni option doesn't look that bad. Yeah... yeah, you know, I do pretty well alone. I read a lot, and I have all the South Park and Star Trek: Next Generation episodes on DVD. And I really like rice-a-roni... especially the cheese and broccoli one. Rice-a-roni's cheap, too. For variety I can switch to ramen. God damn it... why the hell does life have to be so damn complicated? *sigh*

Blessed Be,
Tamsen