And days go by and I think I'm dealing well with it. And then I'm caught sideways and I just want to cry all day long under the covers.
Any friend I would have shared this maelstrom of feelings with is gone.
I had to force myself out the door today and then pull over several times in the car as grief just overwhelmed me. To say I was shocked and, yes, ashamed, is to understate it. The day was glorious which made it even more poignant. The two words "Never Again" kept reverberating in my head.
Some emotional states you can't think or reason your way out of. It just takes you like a tide of longing and despair. I haven't felt that alone in a long, long time. It's a horrible feeling.
And I go into this cheap dollar shop, I'm sure I was a total mess but I didn't care. I wandered uselessly in the aisles, talking inwardly (I hope) to my dear, lost BFF, when a voice hailed me by name and I cringed as I turned to face her and drew a blank. I had to sort through all the filing cabinets in my head and there are many. You come to a new province and meet well over a 1,000 people and it's difficult to place them. My daughter was on TV and that was her opening gambit. And then she fell into her proper file box - a member of my book club but she hasn't been for 6 months.
I yanked myself forcibly out of my own pit of despair long enough to notice how dreadful she looked and discovered she'd had multiple serious surgeries, been divorced from Husband # 2 and husband #1, father of her kids, had died. Plus her only son, brother to her two daughters is transitioning to female.
Reluctantly, feeling whiny and rather stupid, I filled her in on my year so far and you know what she said?
"You must feel like a cork bobbing on an ocean, all adrift, all by yourself, pretending most of the time you're fine when you're not. Not at all."
And she gave me one of those hugs that lasts and lasts. And I attempted a joke about her taking me home and she said:
"Anytime, honey, anytime. There's always a chair at my table and a spare bed somewhere upstairs."
And slowly I felt much better, her kindness so genuine in the midst of her own anxieties and troubles, a fragile connection with all that's so good in the universe.