Choice

Its all about choice.  Damn!  You mean I can't just sit back and wait for the magic to happen?

The journey of grief and sorrow is not a straight line.  It is not controllable.  There is a lot of "going with the flow".  In fact, I wouldn't have it any other way.  The only control is how I react to it.  I know how to deny pain, stuff pain, ignore pain, pretend pain doesn't exist.  But only for a little while.  It will ALWAYS come back to bite me in the behind.

I would like to believe that the worst days of grieving the loss of my love are behind me.  I am not foolish enough to buy into that.  There will be moments, or perhaps days, where the feelings overwhelm me, bring me to my knees, where I snot all over everything, wail about the unfairness of it all, curse the universe for the agony I may feel.  And that's OK.  Because those are just moments.  Those are feelings that I must feel, must express, to aid in my healing.  They come up for a reason, they are a part of the process.  They suck.  But I cannot live there.  I choose not to live there.

It is easy to play the victim.  It is easy to be helpless.  But I am neither a victim nor helpless.  Yes, at times I feel like a victim because Tom is gone way too soon and our very happy marriage on this plane is no longer there.  Yes, there were/are times when I feel helpless.  But come on, really?  Me?  Helpless?  I have tons of help available to me just for the asking (or whining, as the case may be).  I have family who love me.  I have friends who love me.  I have people who will gladly help me.  So helpless, I am not.  Sometimes I just have to open my mouth because those friends and family are not psychic (but how I wish they were!)

There is that word again, "choice".  I know all about misery.  I am not as comfortable with it as I once was.  I don't like it.  In fact, I refuse to live in it.  It is all 100% refundable if I would like it back.  But I don't want it back.  I have another 30 years or so to continue living.  I am NOT going to live it in misery.  I am NOT!!!!! 

I believe in an orderly universe.  It may not be an order that I understand, but there are reasons to everything.  I do not believe in coincidence.  I believe in synchronicity.  There is a reason that Tom is no longer here.  He had done the work he came to do.  I wish it were different.  I still hold his medical team accountable for his early demise.  That is a battle yet to be fought.  And there is a reason I am still here.  I don't know what that reason is, more will be revealed, perhaps more will be required. 

So I have a choice.  I can choose to marinate in pain, or ignore pain, or embrace pain.  In embracing it, I feel it and set it free so it does not control my future.  I can choose to be happy or deny happiness.  I can choose joy. Or I can choose to ignore it, be blind to it.

Yes, there will be times that I will have a pity party for myself.  It is only a place I visit, not a place I live.  I hope that you will kindly understand and allow me those moments.  But slap me out of it I unpack and set up housekeeping. 

Today I choose to do the best for me, to choose gratitude, to choose joy, to choose happiness.  I may not feel it all the time.  I will fake it until I make it.  But I choose to move forward.  And in moving forward I am not leaving the past behind.  I am bringing the very best of it with me, for without it, for without the years with Tom, I would not be the person I am today.