Wounds and Scars

I've got a pretty nasty-looking scar on one shin. It's not a raised welt that runs for a long distance. If anything, it's more like a sunken crater, about the diameter of a half-dollar coin. It's a relic of my younger years, a good reminder of why it is that I don't really drink anymore, and especially why I don't drink when I'm upset. I'm pretty sure we've all done the thing of banging your shin into a coffee table or something like it when walking around in the dark. As best as I was able to figure out, I must've been moving at well better than walking speed. Things were aggravated when I kept rubbing it, thinking I'd just gotten a bruise or welt. Nope, I'd done worse than that. I'd ripped my shin open down almost to the bone. I can only think that I was so intoxicated I didn't even really feel it at the time. Lord knows I sure felt it the next day, and for quite some time afterward!

It took a long time for that to heal over. In the meantime, there were all kinds of frequent reminders that it was there. For the first while, anything that brushed against it, even with a bandage over it, made me jump and have to bite back words my grandmother'd slap me for knowing. Taking a shower was pretty consistently agonizing. Changing the bandage over it was no fun, as it'd often stick, and even the tape pulling on the skin around it would bring out a flare of pain.

And then there was a day I realized that it had closed over. I'm still not exactly sure when it had happened or how long it had really taken. I'm pretty sure I'd gotten so used to just trudging through the annoyance and discomfort that it took awhile to notice it had changed, that most of it wasn't there anymore. Don't get me wrong, It was still tender. Poking at it was still not fun. Same with bumping my leg into much of anything. However, I didn't have to wear a bandage over it all the time. The raw flesh wasn't sticking to whatever was close to it, whether it was socks or medical supplies or pants or sheets or...anything. The hot water and soap from a shower didn't set it screaming and make me want to cry...again.

I'd gotten better....at least somewhat.

As I said, it was still tender. If I rubbed at it much, the scar tissue would open up, and I'd have to go through the whole mess again. However, it wasn't just about anything that'd set it off screaming or make it bleed again. Still, I was able to let go of a degree of tension I hadn't realized I was carrying before. And, at the same time, it felt more than a little strange for that to be gone.

Healing seems to go that way. The initial hallmarks of it, at least for me, have often been discomfort of some type or other. The comfort and relief and enjoyment seem to come later, sometimes quite later. In the last week or so, I've suddenly realized that something's shifted for me. It's the first time in the last 2+ years I can recall that it's felt like I'm living my life, instead of trying to carry on the shattered, mangled remnants of our life. In some ways it feels a bit better. It's like having the wound finally closed over, having become a scar. And yet, there's still the sense of something missing that had been there for a long, long time. I'd had just shy of 15 years with me darlin' wife, and the last two have, for the most part, still been spent living intricately and intimately tied to her. Intellectually, I've known for a long time she's gone, she's not coming back, and I'm now a single man finding my own way. However, this is the first time it's felt like it. I can't help hoping that it'll both maintain and, eventually, it'll become something that feels good, too. I don't know for sure. I've never had to do anything like this before. Despite all the stuff I've read that suggests that's how it goes, I don't know it yet.

To borrow a line from the brilliant movie “The Book of Eli”, “I walk by faith, not by sight.” There's not much other way to go, and I refuse to stand still.

What It's Like...Again

I looked at the date of my last post and was kind of horrified to see how long it'd been since I'd written anything to put up. I had to stop and remind myself of two important things. One is that the last couple months have been really rough. A lot has come up to get dealt with, like the two-year anniversary of her suicide, and other things like it, too. Add to that getting the nasty cold/flu/crud/gombu going around, and I just haven't had much energy left after trying to minimally keep going. The second is that I'd decided this blog was going to be where I'd post some of the stuff I'd been thinking seriously about. It's not one where I just want to put up the day-to-day stuff that comes to mind, or just some random thought because I feel like I HAVE to. I want the posts that I put here to be ones that mean something to me. Hopefully I can get back to doing this regularly, though. It feels good to look at them when they're done and know I put something worthwhile together.

The idea that came to mind for this post came from several things I've seen and heard from other widows and widowers. Very often, they talk about how some people in their lives just don't get what they're going through. Sometimes it's just in little things, but other times it's the result of some major cluelessness (and probably more than a little insensitivity thrown in). The end result is that those who're still grieving end up hurt. I still go with the belief that it's more ignorance than malice, but it doesn't make it hurt any less when it happens. At best, that makes it easier to let go of any hard feelings a little more quickly. It also, though, leaves me wondering how to try to communicate what it's like to those who haven't gone through it.

The most recent parallel that's come to mind for me is what it was like when I went off to grad school. See, when I went off to college, it was still in the same state as where I'd spent most of my life before that. Add on to it that I also had at least one family member there, an aunt, with whom I was close. It was a change, but nowhere near as big as when I packed up to leave Texas, where I grew up, to head out to Salt Lake City to take up residency behind the Zion Curtain. Different state, different culture, different climate...tons of changes. I can still clearly remember, even after 20+ years, how alien and lonely I felt for the first couple of years. The first year was the hardest, especially as I wasn't sure I was cut out for the graduate program. And that was on top of not having a whole lot of friends, not being all that confident, and yet also being someone who really values and needs social interaction. I spent a lot of time feeling really confused and lost and uncertain when I got out here, and that went on pretty intensely for much of my first year. It wasn't as intense the second year, especially as I was able to make some friends among the other students who'd come in and a couple of other people I met at the university. Still, though, I often felt like I'd moved to an alien world where I just didn't quite fit in...or know how to. It probably wasn't until well into my third year that I realized that I'd managed to adjust to it fairly well, that those times of feeling really alien and lost and lonely had faded away to where they were much the exception rather than the norm. It'd probably been that way for some time, but it took that long for the changes to be consistent and big enough for me to see them.

It hit me recently that that's much how I've felt after my wife's death. The parallel's not perfect. I'm living in the same area where I have for, as I said, over 20 years. I've already got good friends out here. I know that I can do what I'm doing now, because I've done it for quite awhile. And yet, there's often the same kind of feeling that's there. Things just often feel alien and not quite right. Sometimes I'm not sure what it is that doesn't feel like it clicks. At best in those times, I could say it feels like I've stepped suddenly into someone else's life and it's just awkward and uncomfortable. At other times, I know what's sparking it off. It's something about her death, or things we used to do together that I'm suddenly reminded are gone. It still hurts, though. It's still uncomfortable, even knowing why it's going on. But at least it doesn't tend to lead me questioning my sanity as much as the times when things just don't feel right and I couldn't, for the life of me, tell you why.

I hope that, like with starting grad school, this will change, too. I know it has some. I don't know if it'll be as fast for it to change. I'd be rather surprised if the times where the reminders hit don't come more often. I'd certainly expect that, when they do, they'd hit harder than the homesickness did all those years ago. The key thing I'm hopeful about is the process.

It's not a perfect metaphor. It doesn't completely describe it, especially for someone who's never had to walk these shadowed, empty trails. Then again, I don't think it'd ever be possible to really be able to share what the actual experience is like just using words. But, then again, the point of the journey is progress, with the faith that the end goal is there. Down at the bottom, past the frozen lake of ice where the trapped Devil still roars, is the way out. So I keep trudging along toward it, not having seen it but trusting that it's there.

The alternative, remaining where I am, is one I just can't accept.