Finding permission to be happy again: Chapter One

I remember watching the sun come up. The way the light peered in the windows always reflected the quiet promise of another day. You looked at me, and kissed my forehead like you always would. We were both calm, in the moment, at peace. After our usual morning pillow talk, I rolled over to grab our baggie to roll up our wake up fuel. You took my laptop, and you put on Ain't No Sunshine by Bill Withers. You closed your eyes and started singing. You weren't performing, you weren't trying to be funny, you were simply in your element. I remember watching you and thinking "I am so fucking in love with you."

I just wish I had said it out loud. I wish I'd known that would be the last morning we would ever spend together.

He proposed to me two weeks before he died.

That is how I know not everything happens for a reason.

On June 6th, 2019, I was waiting for the 6 bus in Archer square. I was on the way to a night class at Wharton Community College. It was around 4 in the afternoon. The sun was bright but not the brightest it had been that summer. I was standing by the bus sign, headphones in my ears and vibing into space as I usually would. A few songs in, a 5 bus pulled up to the stop and a man walked out. I saw his eyes first, before I even noticed there was a person attached to them. His eyes first, and then his mouth. His teeth were so bright in his smiling mouth that they almost had a magnetic pull to them. It wasn’t hard to see that we had noticed each other, but as he walked towards me, I saw more and more that he was looking at me as if I had sprouted angel wings and a bright halo. Suddenly I was frozen. His walking turned into almost a floating, and suddenly we were in front of each other. “Do you know of any busses that go to West Plains from here?” That was the first thing he asked me. Then he complimented my hair, probably because he noticed I was already blushing and subconsciously fixing it. He was always good at noticing those kinds of things. He always said noticing everything the way he did was a blessing and a curse. At the time, that sentiment felt like a corny line to spark intrigue.

So what if it worked?

Maybe that makes me feel better. Maybe thinking of him as an enigma is the answer. Not as the love of my life who was ripped away from me as if he almost never existed.

Thats fucking cruel isn’t it.

And that’s ridiculous too. I typed that about a week ago, and now I read that and feel guilty. That’s the only real answer. The fact that no singular emotion is correct when you are dealing with grief. What is real today might not be real tomorrow. Shit, it might not be real in an hour.

Now I am sitting here in my office, at six in the morning, three months after the last time I added to this story. And I have all of the words and none of the sense. Sometimes I feel as if I am a character in a plot somebody else is still figuring out. I feel the time and my surroundings pushing past me as I move in slow motion, trying to find an opening to get in to. My character is still waiting for her assigned archetype. Am I the hero? The lover? The damsel in distress? The magician?

I turned 25 two weeks ago. I've been spending the last fourteen days trying to picture how I saw my life in my mid twenties. Needless to say, it was a far cry from a widowed college dropout.

Widowed... That word always felt associated with middle aged women with grown children and a steady 401k. Women who have lived their lives with their loved ones, and just happened to have not gone first. Women who know what comes next. Who have stories to tell. I feel like my story hasn't even had the chance to start. How can I tell my story when it hasn't even begun?

But I guess that is why I write, isn't it? If my story hasn't been told, why can't I tell it myself.

To be continued...