I know, I know...

...I haven't been writing on here very much at all this month...or this year. Occasionally I have vague blog posts fluttering around in my mind, but with little burning need to get them out of me and fleshed out. Ninety percent of the time, I turn on my computer, intending to do one thing or another, maybe write a blog entry, but then I get on Facebook or check the news online or...something...and I forget whatever original urge I had.

Partially I think I'm just tired of it. It's been almost five years now since Charley died and almost two years since I started writing on this blog. The grief has gone from being a constant sizzle on medium heat, with unpredictable grease-fire flareups, to being something that has mostly gone cold and boring. The most I do is to sometimes throw something in the microwave to reheat it, record it for the blog's posterity. But rarely is the "meal" anything new or interesting...or even all that lasting.

Which is a good thing--don't get me wrong. I'm quite glad that I'm not a constant puddle of grief anymore and frankly, sometimes--much of the time now?--I'm bored with the whole thing. You can only beat a dead horse so many times, say the same thing in so many different ways. And I get tired of being "the widow."

There was another young woman in my local support group when I first started attending it six weeks after Charley died, and she stopped coming about six months later. She was 4 1/2 years out from her husband's death in a motorcycle accident, when she'd been 30 years old, and when she exited the group, she said it wasn't the Dead Husband stuff that she still needed to figure out; she needed to work on the Her stuff. And despite that I still attend the support group and have no plans to exit it--my friends there are my family now too--I can understand why she left...and it's part of the reason why my blog has been so silent lately.

I've figured out the bulk of the grief and Charley stuff by now. I've experienced the nauseating spectrum of it and, by writing through it for the last two years (and through the first year in my private journals), I've put words to the feelings, isolated and analyzed them until I could feel some control, some sanity over the maelstrom. The beast is known now, and while it doesn't always stay down, dead, and defeated, it is tamed and predictable now. And boring.

The issues in my head now have less to do with grief and widowhood than they do about dissatisfaction with my life. This is not the life I signed up for or expected, nor is it one I particularly want. Yes, yes: there are many, many wonderful things about my life. I have an amazing, wonderful, beautiful little girl. I have wonderful friends. I have a wonderful family. Etc., etc., etc. And while I'm not the miserable shell I was a little over two years ago, I'm not terribly happy either. Even after Charley died, I had this mythical vision of what life might be like four, five years later--and this is not what I thought or hoped it would be.

True, what I "expected" back then probably was never realistic or reasonable in the first place, but I did still have hopes then. Dreams. Optimism. Hope for the future. Plans for how I would get there. But then I hit the second year of widowhood, and then the third, the fourth, the fifth...and bit by bit, those dreams and that hope got beaten out of me. I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm an outright pessimist anymore, but I know I'm certainly cynical. And bitter on bad days.

As I tried to figure out the funk I was in during January and why it didn't go away very lastingly, I did a lot of navel-gazing. And as I continued to process it all, discard reasons that didn't seem to fit, I realized that a great deal of the upsurge was because of the upcoming fifth anniversary of Charley's death this summer. Some of it was simply dread and a sickening nausea that it could be that long already, that five years have passed so quickly. But much of it was having to admit and face how disappointed and dissatisfied I am with where my life has ended up--both compared to what I had as a blissfully happy, naive newlywed and new mother...and to what I'd thought it'd be as a widow.

I used to be a planner, a go-getter, a fighter. A warrior. I used to plan how I'd do things, how I'd attack them, get past them. But there was no way I could "plan" my way through or around grief or have any idea what the terrain might look like on the other side. Unlike Odysseus, there's no Penelope I can return to, and unlike Penelope, I can't keep unraveling my old life until he returns, because Charley is never coming back. And unfortunately, the legacy of the last five years is that I feel quite beaten down, a world-weary, worn survivor of a war that was never tangible or winnable. I survived, sure, but often I feel like a paler, lesser version of what I used to be. More fragile. Limited.

Sometimes at support group we talk about how we've changed as a result of our loss; many of my fellow compadres--most of them?--feel like they're a better person, more patient and empathetic, less worried about little things that don't matter. But I've never been able to claim that I feel like I'm a "better person" because of what I've been through. A lot of the things they claim they've learned and accepted about themselves, I already was before being widowed. And sure, I have deeper troves of understanding, sympathy, and support than I did before and I have learned many things, changed in ways, for which I am deeply grateful. There are definitely things I value more and worry about less as a result of this widowed journey...but I still feel like I was a better version of myself when Charley was alive.

But who knows--maybe I'm just confusing "better" or lesser "versions" of myself with happiness. I was happy before Charley died. I loved my life--even though it wasn't all peachiness and roses all the time--and I had everything I ever wanted and dreamed for: a wonderful husband (who was also my very best friend), a beautiful child, a decent house, security, good friends and family, a good job. And while I certainly have experienced much happiness since Charley died--either in isolated moments, hours, days, or weeks, or even for larger periods of time--I can't claim that I've been happy in the same way.

Maybe I'm just spoiled, thinking that happiness is something I deserve, should expect. I'm not sure that my grandparents or their peers, having gone through the Great Depression and one or both World Wars, would insist that happiness is their earned birthright. But happiness is still the biggest piece that's eluded me these past four-plus years. I just want to be happy again...or at least content. But I'm not entirely sure how to get there, and after battling the war of the last 4 1/2 years, I'm too tired many days to figure it out.

I've wondered many times throughout the last several months if I'm merely depressed. It certainly wouldn't be unexpected, after the crap last summer, the stress of the earlier part of 2009, and the three years of grief preceding it all. I made an appointment with the grief counselor almost two months ago, to talk with her and see if it was past time to go back on antidepressants. I'd taken them briefly, for seven months or so, early in the second year of widowhood, and while I was never totally sold if they made much difference at the time, I could see that they might help me again. I'm tired of how I feel on average days and weeks--blah and underwhelmed--and I know that I used to feel better than this, even while widowed. I haven't decided or done anything about it, though, preferring for now to wait and see if any of it gets better on its own, to see if maybe it's just the time of year, the season...or any other number of excuses that I can cook up. But now that dance team season is done for the year and I have absolutely nothing on my calendar for the foreseeable future to help get me up and out of myself, I suppose it's time to start thinking again about that psychiatrist's referral that's been tucked into my purse since early February.

But damn, that warrior part of me hates it....

So yes. I'm still here. I'm...okay, more or less. I'd been busy with dance team practices and competitions from mid-February til mid-March--and I'd actually been doing pretty darn good overall (not surprising, since I was busy and out and about much of the time...coincidence? hardly...)--and then we had Spring Break this past week. So I shouldn't be surprised that I seem to be in a bit of a low lull right now, in the wake of the high from the last few weeks. But it still gets tiresome.

But in the meantime, I'm going to stop writing and get back to reading more novels, as I have been the last month or two. Better to read other people's words than endlessly reexamine my own belly button lint, under a microscope for the the eleventy billionth time....