Starting Over

I’m starting over again, and it’s scary as hell. I’m on my own for the first time in over ten years. Not only has my household income suddenly dropped about 25%, but I’m all alone, trying to figure out how to move forward.

It’s easier for me to hole-up in my apartment and ignore the world than to keep on explaining what happened and how I’m doing. For the record, what happened is that Shannon died. The details don’t matter. He’s dead.

As for how I’m doing, I can’t really tell the truth about that without inviting sympathy that I don’t really want. I want to get on with my life. I appreciate that people care, but Shannon’s death is a deeply private matter for me in many ways. Some days I want to find mountaintop and scream “Yes. I’m doing okay. Not great, but okay. Give me some time and space”.

I know that people mean well, but I can’t put into words the vacuum I’m living in right now. Part of me is missing, so how could I be doing well? That should be self-evident: I’m a mess.

I can’t find words to describe how big that hole in my life is. Or how much I hurt from my head to my toes every day. I feel like an amputee having “ghost pains” in a body part that’s no longer there.

In the end, none of the details matter: dead is dead.

What matters now is moving forward, trying to move beyond. Scratching and clawing to stay one step ahead of depression. And some nights, it’s a close fight.

Most people don’t see that because I choose to keep my grief private. It’s too personal to put on stage. It’s like one of those dreams where you show up somewhere in your underwear. Or even naked.

I put on a brave face even when I would like nothing better than to go home, turn the phone off, crawl into bed under a pile of covers and hide from the world. The pain is so palpable that I can almost reach out and touch it. It follows me everywhere I go.

I’m a private person by nature. I don’t talk candidly with very many people, and my public personna often belies what’s going on behind the mask. People think I’m being strong, but I don’t feel strong. I feel helpless and alone and profoundly sad.

And scared. Scared of starting over yet again, wondering if I’ll be able to learn how to live alone without going crazy. I hide out in the study because that’s where I always went when Shannon was asleep or not here. It was my hidey-hole. We shared the rest of the house, but the study was my territory.

I haven’t been able to sit in the living room for very long since he went in the hospital. When he was alive, the room felt empty without him in it, even if he was asleep in the next room. Now, it’s even emptier.

I’m moving next week. It’ll only be 100 feet, but it might as well be 100 miles. I’m moving mostly for economic reasons (I need to pay less rent), but I wonder if doing so might not be therapeutic. It will be a tangible symbol of starting over. It will be my apartment, not ours.

A song has been cycling through my head for weeks and weeks now because of one line: “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” It’s one of the great ironies of life: I’m beginning again even as my last new beginning ends.

I’m not leaving him behind. There’s no way I could. He is a part of me and always will be. As I have told several people, the most I hope for is to get beyond his death: I’ll never get over him, and don’t want to.

I want to get beyond.