The Loneliest Time

Oct. 30th 1999 was my wedding day.... only to lead to a divorce in April 2004.

Oct. 30th 2008 was the day my father died.

Which was followed by March 26, 2009 when my older brother Craig died.

Needless to say, it hasn't been a good year.

Right now it's Oct. 26, 1:18 AM and I'm surrounded by loneliness. When I see my ex husband I can only wonder how his life is these days, as we don't talk, other than small exchanges when picking up our children from each other's houses. You know OUR children, the ones we formed together, but that's pretty much the only good we had at the time. These days, I assume his life is good, he's married with a new baby, they do an excellent job at raising our children.... but I don't ask. I just say hello and maybe tell him something personal about how it's hard to live at home, and he maybe says something personal about ... oh wait, he doesn't say anything except "sorry" and in these words there is so much more meaning but the moment passes because what do you say to someone you're no longer in love with and you're only there to exchange children?

You want to say "It's OK. Everything is OK. Everything involving me or you past present future has been/is/ and will be fine." But you don't, because you're scared. Scared to even tell this person that you think the world of him for doing a fine job of raising your own children, and he has become a fine man. And there are too many what ifs and should haves for you to even sleep at this point even though you have been laying in bed for 2 hours trying.

Tears streaming out of the eyes not sure what they are for, or about, but they exist and they feel like knives cutting open the retinas. Look closer. Look closer. Quit looking already, there's nothing left to see.

The loneliest times are these when one is surrounded by pain and grief and knowing logically that there is joy present as well but finding it hard to find right now. But who the hell are you to tell me that it's fine to feel this way? I already know it's fine. I already know. I'm not the first one to have lost a father/a brother/ a husband/ her children....

Grief is weird in the fact that I feel so fucking alone and know that I'm not. I know that so many people have gone and are going through so many worse things and then I feel guilt for feeling my own pain but I have to because I don't know what else to do, and I think "well at least I feel something right now" and soon this pain feeling will turn into happiness; it always does.

Which leads me to question what really makes me happy? Do I even know anymore? Not the obvious answers like "a roof over your head" and "spending time with your children"? Does anyone know what makes them happy? Do I know? Do I? It's a good question which at this moment is not really having any answers but it's OK, truly OK, because I'll know it when I feel it. And I will. In a few days I'll find happiness in another town, with my friends, with my family, with myself.

Til then I suppose I will lay in my bed feeling lonely and grieving and searching for the sun outside my window till the night becomes dawn and the world keeps spinning and spinning and spinning....