I'm feeling incredibly short-tempered tonight. There is no apparent cause, and I was fine earlier in the day. Somewhere between grocery shopping this afternoon after class and dinnertime this evening, a dark cloud descended on me and I can't shake it off.
I'm feeling lonely and sad. I am feeling despairing and hopeless about my future and my life. I feel like April is rushing upon me, and with an almost child-like oblivion to reality, there is a secret hope inside of me that when April 11th 2009 dawns, I will awake and discover that I have simply been part of a vast time and space experiment for the last year. I will wake at 6:30 am on the morning of the 11th, and see Ammon's back as he sits on the edge of the bed. I will see his shoulders rise and fall as he sighs, and feel how badly he wants to simply crawl back in bed and sleep for another hour. I want to find out that this last year was simply a product of my overactive imagination that willed to life my worst nightmare. It's just been a wrinkle in time, right? The last 11 months were simply fates cruel way of showing me how blessed and fortunate our family is, and when April 11th dawns once again, we will have our second chance. I will wrap my arms around my husband and pull him back into bed with me. We will spend the day cuddling on the couch and playing with the kids. We will pray. We will laugh about this crazy dream that I had, and hold onto each other tighter for having imagined the worst possible scenario.
It's all just been a dream, right?
Worse than that, I think I have it backward. Rather than the last year being a dream, a hallucination--it was the 8 years before that that I imagined. I was never a wife. I was never a Mom who got to stay home, with days that were blessedly unscheduled and free of obligation. I was never so sublimely happy that it shone forth from my face like the sun. There was never an 'Ammon and Victoria'. Our names were linked only in my imagination. It was simply a dream, that love that we shared. It wasn't real, and it isn't mine to hold onto. Somehow, I morphed from a 17 year old girl with a future into a 26 year old woman with three kids and a dead husband, and the time in between is fluid. It morphs and changes shape, but it was never real. It never happened. He never loved me, and I was never his.
This is my reality. Sometimes, this is what being a widow feels like. Sometimes, it's not that fact that he isn't here that makes me ache inside. Sometimes, it's the fact that it feels like he was NEVER here that makes me wish I could curl up and die. The feeling that I made it all up--our marriage, our love, the future we had together. Because if it was real, if he really existed, how does it stand to reason that he's NOT here now? How could somebody so real, so vibrant, simply cease to exist? It's easier some days for my mind to rationalize that he wasn't real than to try to figure out how he could be so inexplicably gone.
Sometimes, I still see his hazel eyes sparkling at me in the dark. I see his smile, the texture of his lips. If I sit very still and concentrate, I can smell him. His voice is the loudest one inside my head, and it keeps a running commentary on my day. So many things I would like to be able to say to him. So many jokes we could share, so many experiences and joys to share.
How can he be gone? How did I wake up, and this became my life?
7 comments:
I'm not sure how to respond, but I did have a couple of thoughts I want to share with you. First, I want to send out lots of gentle hugs and prayers of comfort. I hope that recording your feelings is somehow therapeutic. I never even considered that you would feel like the years with Ammon were merely a dream, but our minds can do strange things. Those memories that you have ARE there, he DID live, he DID love you, and he STILL continues to love you. Even though your life has changed, and it's coming up on a year without him, I hope those precious memories of him will be able to comfort you and lift you up from the depths. Hold onto them. You still have them. They can never be taken from you.
(((HUGS))) I'm so sorry. I hope you feel a little better today.
Oh...I wish it was a bad dream and that how you describe getting a second chance could happen. A very well written post on your feelings....I would never have thought of that part of being widow...feeling that it never existed. I like the comment from the first post. Keep focusing on the memories you have!!
Your blog always has me in tears by the end. I hope that you feel better today as well!
wow.. i hope this is no weird i dont usually leave comments on strangers blods but i fell so compelled to that i must. obviouly you dont know me but i wish i could jump through the screen and just give you a tight hug. i stumbled across your blog somehow and have been following your rough journey for the last few months... we dont really have much in common other than we share the same faith. i can not relate to any of the things you are feeling, but just wanted you to know you have made me appreciate my husband so much since i have began following your story. my husband rides motercycles on occasion and very time he goes on a ride i cant help bu think of you and your sweet children. you have definatley helped me with my priorities and strengthened my testimony. i dont know where this long comment is going, but what i really wanted to tell you was this... just remember gods plan. your husband was yours and he is your FOREVER!isnt that great? i know it's tough in this stage of your life wth out him on this earth but some day you will be reunited and it will be amazing. (Im in tears now...just thinking about it) and i am SO NOT an emotional person. i am a convert to the church 9 years ago and i have a testimony that out families are forever families. i know you know this so just try and remember when times are tough...
i hope your not to weirded out by this =)
and there was so many typo's in that.. that im a little embarrased... soory.
Victoria, Great Big Huge Hugs. I can't begin to imagine how I would feel in the same situation but I can understand the tricks of thinking it was all just a dream but hang onto the knowledge of it's reality. There was an Ammon and Victoria and there still is and there always will be. He may not physically be there with you now but you will see him again. You have lots of people who love you and are praying for you.
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