The Courage Paradox

Consider the following: inside, I feel broken, toxic, afflicted and yucky. I don't feel strong or brave. But, if tell people that I feel broken and toxic, they call me strong and brave. What's up with that? Am I broken or brave? Healthy or helter-skelter?

It's close to the point where I think I could literally say "I'm feeling the opposite of brave right now" and people would say "that's so brave of you!" ...Uhh...is this one of Gollum's riddles?

Guess what? I feel like, you know, there's some kind of weird, supernatural disease or ethereal poison that I carry, that didn't exist in me six months ago, which could one day harm myself or others. That's how I feel in my insidey-parts.  Am I brave now?

Can I be both?

Apparently so, based on the titles people have bestowed unto this simple cynic. What do you think? Does sharing creepy feelings indicate valor? Does acknowledging weakness convey a strength of a different sort? Either way, I don't know how to use it. Being called strong is warm for a few moments, but grief has drilled into me permanently, drilled into me a...gloryhole. (Best metaphor ever)

I don't know what I should feel when people call me courageous. There are options. I can squash down their well-intentioned sentiment with the crushing reality of piteous grief. I can lie and say, "Yeah, look at how strong I am, who needs a soul mate, beer me." I can waffle, and try to point out the truth while also trying to accept the compliment. I can also just ignore it. There's probably other stuff, too.

Maybe I really am doing the courage by whinging about my feels. Maybe I just can't accept strength as a quality I may possess in the wake of not being able to do a damn thing to keep my wife out from under a rock at a plot. Screw it both ways, I just don't get where I'm keeping this strength y'all keep talking about, cuz I could use some strength...!

Wait. Maybe the strength isn't something I possess until that moment. Maybe it's something I gain by virtue of it being reflected back at me based on how you feel in the sharing. Maybe, because I can share with you, and you feel it takes courage, that's where the courage comes from. Boy, children's books have really boiled down the semantics. Courage used to be so simple, right? Harry stands up to Malfoy, and Snape, and Voldemoohoohoo: clear-cut courage. I'm just trying to fathom how to take a compliment. Uggh. 

This is getting existential. I'm gonna go meditate on the metaphysical implications of courage. Beam me your thoughts through your third eye -- it's cool, my chakras get unlimited messaging.

You just can't even

Don't ever compare your bitter breakup or destructive divorce to my grief at the death of my wife. I know they are both a loss, an emptiness, a feeling of loneliness and regret. Maybe there is something there akin to grief. I guess you could say a love died in both scenarios -- figuratively.

But my dead love left a corpse. That's not a metaphor, allegory, image, symbol, analog or figure of speech. Your dead love has a person that is still breathing, still walking around, still paying bills and texting. You can still say things like "maybe one day we'll get back together." For me, the equivalent would be "maybe one day I'll take her remains to a witch doctor and see if she can come back as a zombie."

If you and your lover have parted ways, I'm sure there are profound feelings of loss and/or betrayal like exist with grief. I can't even imagine what that's like. But you can't imagine what it's like for me to've literally, not figuratively, watched my love die. I needed a funeral director, not a lawyer. She didn't take half her stuff when she left, I still have everything. If I want to email her, there's no warm body there that will read the subject heading and maybe delete the message. I'll never accidentally bump into my wife at the store or see her carrying on on someone else's facebook page. I'll never see her again, not even for a second. I'll never hear her voice again except in recordings. I'll never come to terms with why she left or 'go our separate ways.'

If you and your lover split up, no matter how traumatizing or disturbing the process is, there is still a chance, however remote, that you two could get back together somehow. Even if the chance is only .000000000001%, that chance is still greater than zero, which is what I'm locked in at. And that ridiculously small percentage makes all the difference in the world. If there was a .000000000001% chance for my wife to still be alive, you wouldn't be reading this right now.

Results may vary

I don't say "forever" unless I mean it. Like when I say "I've been standing in the checkout line at Wal-Mart FOREVER!" Actually, at Wal-Mart, I usually "for-fucking-ever." Unless there's children standing in front of me or someone wearing a 'Property of Jesus Established 0 A.D.' t-shirt. Then I say "for-goddamn-muthafuckin-ever."

But I told my wife that I wouldn't "say forever" to her unless I meant it. When we first started dating, I was 15 and my mom told me the marriage wouldn't last three weeks. She was only wrong by about 19,266.7%. Approximately.

I proposed to my wife at 19. It was a formality, really. We didn't have a date in mind, we just knew that, yeah, we're sold with this relationship, wrap it up, we're gonna take it to go. I totally screwed up the proposal, though. You see, we had talked about the proposal, what she wanted and didn't want, and I knew enough to put some of my own creativity into it to make it special. In the Disneyworld complex in Florida (or as I like to call it, 'The Waltican' or 'Waltican City'), when you drive in, there's a big archway that reads "Walt Disney World: Where Dreams Come True." I proposed to her beneath that arch at twilight (not the stupid movie, the beautiful time of day). But! I remembered clearly in previous discussions she had told me that she didn't want me to propose down on one knee. It was just what she wanted.

So I pulled over to the side of the road under the arch and leaned from the driver's seat to the passenger's seat and opened the ring box and popped the question. She had kinda guessed that this was the proposal already and wasn't surprised, but was still ecstatic. We continued driving, we had dinner all lined up at The Rainforest Cafe in Downtown Disney. As she took a picture of the ring to upload to Facebook, she happily reminded me that actually, she had stated that she specifically wanted me to take a knee for the proposing, and was kinda bummed. Whoopsie! Boy, did that make me stammer! I promise I'll do better next time! Oh, wait...

That was at 19. And she was still so happy that I wasn't even in the doghouse for my botching the question. But the truth is that I told her "forever" long before that. Like a fool in love, I told her "forever" when I was 16. If I ever heard a 16-year old say "forever" I'd call him or her a bald-faced liar, or, at best, an ignoramus. But the truth is that I told her I wouldn't say forever unless I meant it. At 16, I probably was a liar and an ignoramus. But I meant it. And I kept my promise. In fact, "forever" wasn't nearly as long as they made it seem in the brochure. I think I'm gonna go read the terms and conditions, as a matter of fact. She was way too young for the term to "forever" to even apply, right? There's gotta be somebody I can sue.

It's something

It's weird how I can see myself fading in and out of shock. Like earlier today was pretty rough, strong emotions, it was rainy out. I went for a drive, mostly because of the rain. I like the aesthetic of the rain and the gamble of the slicker roads. But now, I'm at home trying to organize my thoughts and I can't feel anything. Back in shock. I'm typing live from shock! Hi, world! I think I can relate to you right now.

Shock kinda forces you into the present. It's like watching TV. Yeah, there's shit going on in the world. But right now, TV is happening. So shush, I'm tryin' to hear the TV. Shock says "be quiet, grief, I'm trying to be."

Don't get me wrong, I love to be wracked with the agony of having watched my wife die, but hear me out about shock. Sometimes, every odd Thursday or Friday, whether or not I've been crying all day, I can feel, with the shock, a tiny glimmer of optimism.

I didn't have one of those today.

But they do happen.