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