More info, less whining:
I am in a good place right now. I have wonderful opportunities in front of me, and I think that I have finally come to terms with Eric’s passing. For both of those milestones, I am extremely grateful.
However, in moving from merely surviving to living, I am faced with a whole new quandary: how will I now identify myself? For the past year, my life has been a harrowing test of clinging onto sanity’s cliff by one finger…and now that I am safely off of the ledge, I find myself questioning which roles I should assume. I proudly wore the guise of doting girlfriend and supportive wife for almost ten years…and now I am in a strange new place where I’m not quite sure how to act, and I’m not even sure of how to define myself.
Thusly, I am trying on new roles like a five-year-old playing dress up in her mother’s closet. However, I can’t shake the nagging feeling that, at twenty-six years of age, I should have all of this figured out already.
As I try to move on with my life, I am chained to an invisible weight of guilt. I plan to start having a social life, and have started caring about my appearance again, and wanting to seem attractive to others…but even as I put on makeup where there was none for so many months, I can’t help but feel as if I am cheating on my lovely Eric. I know that the guilt is unfounded, and that he would want me to be happy, but those thoughts do little to assuage the feelings of infidelity.
I am so fortunate to finally have reached this plateau, but it seems as if I have traded one problem for another.
I can’t believe that it has been almost a year that he has been gone.
I need some direction. Widowhood is a long and arduous journey, and I have reached yet another crossroads…
