My time of sense is off

The early bird gets the worm, but the night owls get mice and voles and stuff. If I have to pick, I'd rather not eat worms. It's 4 A.M., I can't call it Friday anymore, and I should be asleep. If it weren't for that whole 'dead' thing, my wife would be happily awake with me. We were both night owls, and, you know, I still am. We arranged our lives around it: we both worked a 3 P.M. to 11 P.M. job, stayed up til 4 or 5, slept until noon or 1. I don't know about healthy, wealthy or wise, but it made us happy. We usually said 'good night' around when what's really appropriate is 'good morning.'

But if one of us was still going, we both were, like Tom and Jerry. My dad once asked if we ever went to bed at different times. We looked at him with the same confusion as he had on his face when we told him we always slept at the same time. Put it this way, it was always funner to do stuff together, like being awake or not.

I don't quite know where I'm going with this blog post. But, to recap, I'm in the 4 o'clock hour, and not the one most people are familiar with. Things generally end up making less sense at this time. Or maybe they get to make less sense. It's probably why we liked this time some much. Daytime makes too much sense, it's exhausting.

Post titley thing

Self-actualization isn't all it's cracked up to be. I would know. I had the realization recently that I can call myself a writer now. I've been making sentencey, paragraphy stuff consistently for some time now in several capacities. It's a dream coming true. And it feels... just like being unemployed and living in my parents' attic.

Make no mistake, I am not a paid writer. But a writer nonetheless! Nobody can take that away from me! This blog has over 70 posts! I have a complete rough draft of a novel! I have zero income!

I've said before that grief often feels like living in a dream, and then I correct myself and say nightmare. For once, I had a thought that maybe the dream's worth a try.

I do the writing thingy with wordity. It's not much, but it's a dream accomplished for me. Everything from here on out is just gravy. Wouldn't it be wild if I got paid for writing? That'd be like, another dream come true! Double dream come true! And then my parents would get their dream: their attic space back.

Mia-isms - (Flip a cow, Quish/squish)

Here's another round of some unique verbiage that, as far as I know, my wife coined, to my great amusement.

Flip a cow

     [flip uh kau]

verb

1. to berate someone verbally

2. to become animatedly enraged

ex. If that's a parking attendant by my car, I'm gonna flip a cow on him!

Quish/squish

     [kwish or skwish]

verb

1. to let out a short, sometimes involuntary, high-pitched utterance, usually about something cute

2. to make any of a variety of small physical gestures in response to something cute, such as squinting or clasping one's hands together

ex. It's the cutest Welsh Corgi, when I saw it, I squished so loud he barked back at me!

Hey, they volunteered as tribute

If you have any anger with grief, or life pisses you off or you're just plain screwed up in the head, I highly suggest watching combat sports for your own good. It's against the law for me to cold-cock random people in the grocery store to vent my rage. But it's perfectly legal for the fine athletes of the Ultimate Fighting Championship to pound each other bloody for my vicarious amusement. And it is amusing. I've been going through the UFC's online archives of fights that are free to watch as an alternative to handling my anger destructively. One fight struck me, pun intended.

Back in 2007, Randy "The Natural" Couture took the heavyweight championship title in a unanimous decision from Tim "The Maine-iac" Sylvia. Recently, I watched the five rounds of pure domination, and, being so one-sided, it wasn't overly exciting. But after the fight, something got to me. Couture's wife came out into the octagon and gave her winner a well-earned kiss. Goddamn it, mixed martial arts isn't supposed to make me cry!

Only loved ones can turn a great moment into a perfect moment. We're social animals: even in the midst of modern-day gladiator barbarity, we like to share our joys. I'm jealous of Mr. Couture, but not because of any comically oversized championship belts. My wife would've been so proud of me in that play thingy I was in last week. Now I have to try being proud by myself. Ugh. And, oh-by-the-way, my wife liked UFC/mixed martial arts, too. Our nickname for it was 'punchface,' as in "want to watch punchface?" She came up with it. See? Just by being there for it with me, my wife even made pointless violence better. And pointless violence was already pretty awesome.

Hurt so good

So that play thing I was doing is over now, but I have a secret about it. The play was really sad, almost maudlin. That's not the secret. The concept (written by a former teacher of mine from high school) of the play is a circle of friends, most of which use drugs, reacting to one of them dying of a drug overdose. You can infer how I can relate. The secret is: making people sad made me happy.

And I don't mean 'it warmed my heart' to 'share my story' in semi-acting. No, I was spitefully happy, sadistically happy. I asked everyone I talked to after the show if I made them cry, and when they invariably admitted to at least tearing up, I would fist-pump in victory. Don't worry, I'm not really rejoicing in their sorrow. I'm rejoicing in the source of their sorrow: a brief taste of bitter understanding.

Friday, Sunday and twice on Saturday, I, and the awesome cast of JUNK, forced a crowd of 20-40 people to feel the way I do all the time. They only had to feel it for an hour and forty minutes, the lucky bastards.

Most folks don't or can't understand. Some think they understand, and some don't want to understand, both of which peeve me. I don't even think I really understand, but at least I can admit it, and I think that admission is closer to understanding than anything.

The take-home from doing the show is that a small handful of people have a slightly better understanding now. And it made them sad. And it made me happy. But the joke's on me, because their sadness will pass, and they'll go back to their lives. Just as my happiness will pass and I'll go back to my grief. But I'll always have my memory, my hour and forty minutes of morbidly depressing, schadenfreude fame.

I've got a bug

This week, I'm gonna be light on blog posts. As in, this will probably be the only one. Sorry! I caught a bug: the acting bug! Hahahaha! So clever!

I'm currently in the middle of tech week for a community play this weekend, and my mind is engulfed in the flames of preparation. I don't even have time to come up with any better jokes than 'acting bug.'

If you happen to be in Upstate New York, and think you'd enjoy an amateur drama about drugs and death (featuring the music of Bright Eyes and Ryan Adams), the deets are here. Otherwise, I'll be back to keyboard-clacking after the weekend!

By way of apology, here's an awesome grief-related Calvin & Hobbes!

Cherries, no jubiliee

Fuck sundaes. Hear me out, I'm not just trying to be a summer bummer. I love ice cream. Hot fudge is delicious. Whipped cream, of course. But that goddamn cherry on top. I just don't care for the texture of cherries. I like cherry flavored things, I like cherry juice, I like when the slot machine shows cherry-cherry-cherry. But I always donated my sundae cherries to my wife. Now I have to deal with them myself, or stop ordering ice cream sundaes. And the latter ain't happening. Out of desperation, I've started whipping them at homeless people.

I've never met a couple, married or dating, where they both like all the same food. My wife, get this, used to give me her bacon. Bacon! That's true fucking love, right there. Now I get no bonus bacon, and I have to set up the fire pit in the back yard to dispose of all my excess sundae cherries.

Can you imagine the weird looks I would get asking for a sundae, no cherry? I'd be branded a Communist Nazi barbarian Trump-supporter. They'd probably just tell me to keep my money, and give me directions to a psych ward. It's bad enough I have to ask for no tomatoes anytime I can afford fast food. Guess who loved tomatoes? When I'm ready to start dating, I have my ideal new girl's food preferences all mapped out. In the end, isn't that what we all want? Someone to enjoy life's unwanted cherries and tomatoes and cherry-tomatoes?

Crazy cat laddie

As a widower, especially one of the "under-thirty" variation, I'm facing something I thought I was going to avoid for most of my life: living alone. Don't get me wrong, I'm still happily mooching off my parents for room and board at present. But that can't last. I started dating my wife when I was 15, and literally have never lived without her or my folks (unless you count the two marking periods I spent in a college dorm before my 'leave of absence').

The worst part is, though not solely, I've lived with myself before. So I know all my gross, annoying habits. I've just always either had to hide them (as with my parents) or deal with negative reactions (from my wife). But this time, it's just gonna be me, and I'm not looking forward to dealing with my bullshit. I've thought about looking for a roommate, but I don't want to subject a stranger, or worse, a somebody I like, to 24 x 7 x 365 of me. Hell, I don't wanna be stuck with me: that guy is always moping and bitching about his dead wife, ugh.

I do want to challenge myself to take care of myself by myself, truth told. But I'm seriously dreading the loneliness. I'm already lonely, and I don't expect it'll improve once I leave my parents' house again. The only ray of sunnyunnyshine is my cats (not the most masculine of statements, but I digress  [I swear, 'wife' refers to a woman {I don't judge anyone, don't judge me}]). Though they aren't much for conversation, my cats are better than solitary confinement. And they like me. My cats probably tolerate me better than I do myself, if only because I am The One Who Controls Food & Poobox, and I give acceptable chin-scritches.

Morning people are my mortal enemy

If this were Facebook, I'd say, regarding my relationship with sleep, 'it's complicated.' I have trouble falling and staying asleep in the best of times, and grieving my wife sure ain't that. I put most of the blame on my brain, which is rarely my ally. No matter how tired I am, as soon as my head hits the pillow, it starts going thinkthinkthinkthinkthinkthinkthinkthinkthinkthinkthinkthinkaaaaaaaand it's daylight outside. By the way, to the chirping birds: you're not cute, you're freakin' assholes.

I've tried warm milk and melatonin, eye masks and listening to relaxing music. I've tried different pillows and blankets and mattresses and a variety of narcotics. I'll say, alcohol helped, but alcohol also blocks R.E.M. sleep, so it's not the refreshing, wake-up-not-wanting-to-strangle-somebody sleep. No Ambien, though. I'd rather not sleepwalk or sleepdrive or sleepsex (at least without somebody to do so with) like folks I know. If you have any better suggestions, I'm always looking for tips, but my brain has been fighting sleep for years, and it's a combat veteran.

The good news is that I also seem to be blessed with the ability to function on very little sleep, which is good, because otherwise, I probably just wouldn't function. Most of high school, I got ~4-5 hours of sleep a night and graduated fifth in my class, which doesn't say much for my graduating class. It's still fucking aggravating. Lying awake for hours, it's hard not to just get pissed off at my own noggin. I guess, what I'm saying is, if you could, leave me some sleep in the comments, pure R.E.M., uncut.

Hair-brained

I used to have my hair grown out to about mid-back, maybe a bit longer (hard to tell since it was always behind me). My wife's was even longer. Naturally, we both complained about the upkeep and inconvenience. But I liked hers long and she liked mine long, so we compromised on a cease-fire.

When she died, I cut mine all off, with the idea of donating it to Locks of Love. However, I still have my ponytail sitting on the shelf, like some creepy serial killer's trophy. I grew the darn thing, but I still feel like it was hers. I'm not giving it to a stranger. I don't know what I'm going to do with it, really. It's just six or seven years of dead cells, wrapped in an elastic band. Boy, this is sounding more and more serial-killerish the more I describe it. But I can't get rid of it, not yet.

At least hair doesn't spoil. I'm growing my hair out again, now. This time for me (but still kinda for her a little bit). I'd like to think that, by the time my hair is as long as it used to be, I'll decide what to do with my old ponytail. I wish I'd thought to cut a lock of her hair off when she died. That definitely wouldn't be creepy at all, right? In Victorian society, they fetishized hair, especially of dead loved ones, so there's a precedent. Nothing Victorians did was weird or creepy at all. I guess, what I'm trying to say is, sorry chemo patients, maybe next ponytail.

Locker room talk (ugh)

I walked into my gym locker room today and a man was on his cell, talking to his wife about retractable awnings. It was one of those calls where, though I only heard one side, I could tell she wanted him to do something he didn't want to do, but he was agreeing to anyway. Relatable as hell. After the call's conclusion, he said, to the only person within earshot (moi) that she "always calls at the wrong time." Fuckin' awnings, amIright?

I kept my back turned. I wanted to shake the man and scream "AT LEAST YOURS IS STILL ALIVE, DUMBASS!" But I have that social awkwardness thing, so I wasn't saying shit. Death has a way of showing how petty petty shit really is.

Petty shit is really fucking petty, folks. I would give my left eye and right kidney for an inopportune phone call from my wife about retractable awnings.

When I turned around with my antisocial earbuds in, I saw that he had a good 20 years on me. Is it wrong that I feel wiser than him? If you have a significant other available to hug, and are reading this, go give them a big fucking hug for no reason. And tomorrow, do it again, and the next day. Because overnight, they could have a heart arrhythmia or brain aneurysm, and you might never get another chance.

If you really don't want to give them a hug, dump/divorce them and go find someone worth hugging, even when their petty awning phone calls annoy you. My wife died at 27. I don't know how else to make it clear that life is short. One of you will die first, and then you won't give two shits about awnings, retractable OR stationary.

Another post about other posts (again)

Pretty sure I've repeated myself on numerous past posts. I know that the blog is free to read, but I do wanna make sure you get your money's worth. Unfortunately, grief is a lot of circular sensation. There's denial, anger, depression, bargaining and acceptance, plus lots more, and unfortunately, they aren't one-and-done (even acceptance).

If I've done multiple posts about feeling lonely, it's only because that shit hasn't changed yet. Grief is like walking in an enclosed 'Hunger Games' forest. I've passed that tree half-a-dozen times now, and I'm gonna pass it more. Sometimes the tree is wearing Groucho glasses or a rainbow clown wig, but everyone can tell it's the same.

One day I'll get out from under this glass bell jar and return to the real world. I believe that to be true. But until then, I may repackage previous thoughts as they re-return. Hopefully, the different disguises are worth the individual reading. Maybe next time I talk about being lonely, I'll dress it up in a sailor gimmick with a Flavor Flav clock. You'd pay the cover charge to see that, right?

Reach out & touch someone (consensually)

I don't want to reach out to people because I don't want them to think I need help, and nobody reaches out to me because they think I don't need help. Maybe help isn't the right word, since nobody can "help" with that whole my-wife-is-dead thing. But I would like...something? Company. But widowers sucks as company, and I would know: one keeps me company 24-7.

Part of me doesn't want to ask for support because I have a Y-chomosome. Part of me is just lazy. All of me is pretty sure nobody wants to listen to a one-sided outpouring of hard-to-relate-to feely-weelies. But I want somebody to talk to-hoo-hoo!

Mostly, I want my wife to talk to, but that's outside of possibility. Hell, I'd even just settle for folks who can take it in stride when I interject her into conversation. It would also be pretty sweet if I felt like taking initiative to reach out. But I will be doing no such thing. I'll be hiding, alone, and whining that nobody is reaching out to me. It's just easier that way.

#CryForHelp

#IDontNeedHelp

#Hashtag

We are all one (the loneliest number)

This is the hard part. Well, one of the fourteen-zillion hard parts of grief. Who the fuck am I now? OK, I'm a widower, a writer, a cynic, a fucked-up individual and a capricorn. There's all kinds of personality tests online, if I'd like to join Scientology or have my character defined by which Disney Princess I'm most like. I'm pretty familiar with what I am. But adding up all the 'whats' still don't really help me identify 'who.' I met my wife as a teenager, and I went from being my parents' kid to her significant other without a missed beat. Now I need to know who this guy is that inhabits the body I call mine: all by myself.

I've never had such an open-ended question before. I googled "who am I?" and there wasn't even a snarky Google easter egg. A couple of movies and a Christian song came up. Any religion would love for me to come and ask them who I am, because they all have a canned answer to that. But being one of God's creations hasn't brought me much fulfillment. I need a bit more specific an answer than that. It's kind of like being told I'm a carbon-based life form: it's closer to answering 'what' than 'who.'

The answer to who I am now can only come from me. There's no Wikipedia entry or eHow article for this. So who am I? Mostly, I'm a guy who is hating having to deal with grief and an identity crisis simultaneously. I'm too lazy for this shit. I'm also someone who doesn't want to be me right now. How can I figure out who I am, if I don't even want to be it? I'll have to square with that one day. And on that day, I'll be me, and know what that really means. But until then, I'll just fake it.

At least 'Murica knows how to celebrate

Oh, that beautiful Fourth of July mass pyromania. Even if you aren't from the U.S., you gotta enjoy fireworks, any controlled explosion, really (my sincere condolences to PTSD victims). My wife and I loved them. This year will be my first without her, driving out with my family to a fireworks display 45 minutes or an hour outside of town, one the folks attend annually. The fact that I still want to go, even despite the saccharine-patriotic country music they blare, is a miracle.

This particular fireworks display, of course, has history with my wife and I. There was the year we got lost driving home. I didn't want to tell her (as I was driving), just how little I knew where we were. This was back before GPS and cell phone navigation. The technology existed, but we were broke. I'm an Eagle Scout with the Orienteering Merit Badge, I rarely lose my way, and inside, I was panicking. I would've even swallowed my man-pride and asked for directions, if it hadn't been out in the middle of the nobody-awake-this-late boonies.

Being utterly lost in rural back roads with my wife at night was kind of like playing slot machines. The blinking lights and rewarding sounds totally make up for any embarrassing losings. I did admit to being lost, and we laughed our way home, hours after my parents and sister. I could completely lose my sense of direction, but as long as I knew where my S.O. was, it was just another fireworks afterparty.