Around the time of the anniversary of my husband's death was the worst part of the entire year for me. I went a little crazy. I didn't drink, do drugs, or go off and do insane things like bungee jump or jump out of airplanes, but I got on dating web sites and ... God alone knows why I got on those sites. Someone told my daughter it was because I was lonely. And I was, desperately lonely. The truth is, no one could fill that void but my Robert. However, I told myself, and anyone that would listen that I was doing good; because I was getting on with my life not drowning in sorrow or hiding under the covers in my bedroom. Little did I know, I was still hiding. I simply didn't know it until recently.
About a month after the anniversary of Robert's death, I began to come back to the land of the living. While there is still a deep and gaping void which my husband filled for nearly 30 years, I began to feel joy and laughter, and I began wanting to spend time with my children instead of selling the house we had purchased 25 and a half years earlier and move to somewhere no one knew me and call my children "when" I wanted to call them. That was weird, I love my children with all my heart and have always treasured and breathed in every moment I have been blessed to share with them; the good, the bad, and the ugly! But I had wanted to run away from them for over a year.
I slowly came awake to life again. I probably began to act a little more normal than I had been over the last year or so. I'm nutty to start with, so who really knows.
I attend an annual writing conference once a year, in my home state of Oklahoma called Oklahoma Writers Incorporated, Inc. (OWFI). It was when I unexpectedly attended this year that I really began to come alive. Until then, I had been existing. I hadn't wanted to go, but God got in the mix and got me there this year against my decision not to attend.. I'm thankful that He did now. At the time I kept thinking "why did I come. I don't want to be here." I never thought I would think again. Live again. Write again. But that weekend I met new friends, as you always do at these things; I listened to the seminars I attended and listened to the speakers; and I took photos. Life began to creep back into my bones, my veins, my blood, my heart.
Following the OWFI Conference, slowly over time, I would have a thought, then the idea for a poem. I slowly began to read again. I stopped playing games on my computer and began to write down how I was feeling, write down ideas for stories for this blog, became creative again.
~ To be continued ~
