Love: An Ability or a Liability?

Liability:  something that is a hindrance or puts an individual at a disadvantage (Wikipedia).

Ability:  the quality or state of being able (Merriam-Webster.com).

I’m on the fence about this one.  And I’ll tell you why.  I know you must be thinking that it’s because I’ve loved and lost...and that’s partially true.  The truth is, I think I’m on the fence about it because I’m old.

I have loved.  And I have lost.  And, when it comes to love...I’ve gotten old.

I know that many of you are sitting there rolling your eyes and getting ready to hibernate your computers, thinking, “35?  35?  And she says she’s old?” 

But I think, when it comes to love we tend to age pretty quickly.

Since I’ve been trying to build a love life the second time around, I’m less open to new things.  I went from losing my husband suddenly...to wanting to fill that void in my life immediately...to learning (the hard way) that that wasn’t going to happen...to learning (and loving) how to be by myself...to trying to learn how to be with someone else again.

I went from feeling like love is a liability...to learning that it’s an ability.

The truth is, I actually think that most people my age (and older...and some, maybe younger) probably feel the same way.  It doesn’t matter if you’ve been widowed, divorced, or never married:  If you have made it to a certain age and have found yourself single...we’re probably all in the same boat.

I’m less bendable (mentally and physically).  I’m more patient about learning about myself and somewhat less patient about someone else learning about himself (bitchy, but true).  And I’m slowly getting to the point where I just like my life...even though it wasn’t the life I thought I was going to have.

Previously married or not...isn’t that kind of true?

In my first, vulnerable single days after 30 (yikes)...love was a liability.  There was so much at stake.  My sanity, for one.  Breaking up or something not working out would have been enough to send me into a tailspin of epic proportions.  I fluctuated between not having the time or heart to deal with someone else’s shit to not wanting someone else to have to deal with my own.  I flopped around, like a fish out of water, hoping that someone would have the heart to gently throw me back in.

Relationships didn’t work out.  And, true to the cliché... “it’s not you...it’s me.”  Love meant heartbreak.  Abandonment.  Happiness, but with a price.  It didn’t matter how much I was loved...I sabotaged anything I could get my hands on.

In short...I was the liability.

Golly, I wish I had thought to put that on my online dating profile.  Just think of what a hot ticket I would have been.

There came a point (and truthfully...I don’t know when it happened) that that stopped.  The ability to love grew.  Like a toddler, it learned to walk.  And in the childhood phase it learned to run.  I like to think that it’s a teenager now:  It’ll test you, but ultimately it’s something you might like in a few years so you should take a risk and stick with it for a little while.

I’ve started thinking that the ability to love is not something you just have.  It’s something you learn.  And sometimes relearn.  And sometimes try and abandon while you’re relearning.  And sometimes come back to on New Year’s Eve when you’re frustrated with being alone, have had too much wine, and register for eHarmony when you swore you would never do it again.

Wow.  Sorry.  I think I was projecting there.

The point is...I don’t think that the ability to love just happens.  Just like any other “ability” you have, you have to learn it.  You didn’t just walk out of your mother’s womb (although, by my third kid it kind of felt like it)...you had to figure it out.  You may be a musical genius, but that didn’t happen without some effort.  Superman didn’t know what the hell to do with that cape the first time around...they just didn’t include that part in the movie.

Think of the liability he must have been.  And we single girls thought we were bad. 

Sheesh.

Anniversaries Are Like PMS...It's That Time of the Year For Me

So, the time that I dread the most all year long is finally upon me.

The anniversary.

Not just “the” anniversary. But also my wedding anniversary. Yup. We actually had my husband’s visitation on our 11th anniversary (2 days after he died). If that doesn’t make me sound like a bad country song, I don’t know what does.

As this day creeps closer and closer, I feel worse and worse. Experience has shown me that this is my lowest point and the actual day really isn’t so bad. It’s like I get all of my depression and sorrow out in about 1 week of weepy, exhausted, messy living and then I perk right back up again on the “big day.”

I’ve been thinking about the last few years and how some things have gotten harder and some things have gotten easier. I know that for a lot of people who are at the beginning of this journey, they get a little uneasy when the more seasoned grievers tell them that it doesn’t get any easier. My usual response to that is, “That’s not true! It gets easier! You’ll be okay.”

Because who wants to hear, when they have to truly concentrate in order to put one foot in front of the other and breathe at the same time…that it gets worse?

But today, I started thinking that the term “easy” is really relative. When I think about the first year…it was a blur. It was 365 days of anxiety attacks, shakiness, and sleepless nights. It involved days that I had to get up even when I would have rather been sharing a bed with a wild tiger if that meant I could just stay in it a little longer. It was a year of listening to bad advice and incorrect commiserating and squirming through more uncomfortable moments than I ever thought possible.

I dealt with the demons of remembering those days in the hospital, but at the time, it seemed like it had happened to someone else. If anyone asked me to tell them the story of how my husband died, sometimes I could spill it like it was a fictional story and then sometimes I would get midway through it and realize, “My God. That happened to me.”

It was…well…a bad year.

This was followed by year number 2. The anxiety had lessened a little. Getting out of bed was a bit easier. And I learned to flip people the finger behind my back as they told me I should get on with things.

I just got a lot of dirty looks from the people standing behind me in the line at Wal-Mart.

What I found the most disappointing about that year was that I didn’t have the magical moment that I was hoping for. Like a child who realizes that there’s no such thing as Santa Claus, I discovered that there is no such thing as “getting over” what has happened. I didn’t wake up on the 366th day and feel any different than I did the day before.

Sorry y’all. But that’s the truth.

Now, year number 3. This is the year I have really felt the milestones. The first year, I knew they were there, but the pain was too fresh. The loss was too new to really know what my husband’s absence was going to mean for the rest of my life. The second year, I was too busy trying to find that mythical “new normal” I kept hearing everyone talk about and fighting to keep my head above water. Or just closer to the surface so I could gulp the air every once in awhile.

Year 3 was the first year that I really cried when my husband wasn’t here my son’s birthday…because it really hit me how much they were both missing. I suddenly realized that pretty soon I will have had the dog that we got together (our first kid) longer than we had been married. This is the year that I really felt the passage of time and how fast it goes. (Even with a willful but entertaining 4-year-old around. If you’re going to feel pity for me about anything check back with me in about 11 years and see how I’m doing. If I’m not around, I may have checked myself into assisted living early.)

My grief and my loss have become as a part of me as a vital organ. To lose them may mean losing some of what I have left of my husband and that would be a real loss. It’s not that I welcome depression and sorrow, but some days they remind me that he’s still with me. And if I want to keep the good memories…with that comes the pain of realizing that that’s just what they are. Memories.

I don’t know if this will make anyone who is new to this game feel any better, but I do think that the first year is the worst. The difference between the first year and the following years (in my experience) is that the blinding pain of loss isn’t always with you. As I said in a speech recently, “Even though your loved one may be the first person you think of every morning for the rest of your life, eventually this becomes more of a routine and less of a jolt.”

What makes some of us feel like sometimes the years after the first are worse is that when the pain does come, it’s sharper and more defined. For me, since it’s not the same pain that used to be my constant companion, when it happens, it takes my breath away. After a few years, we can pinpoint what’s happening, but we have learned through experience that there’s nothing we can do to stop it. And we have the added bonus of being far enough out, that people don’t understand why we’re still grieving.

But I’ll tell you something. Year 4 is the year I will forgive myself for it. Year 4 will be the year that I realize that it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks…I loved my husband and I will grieve him however I need to for the rest of my life. I don’t care if it’s when I see a lifted Jeep (one of his great loves) riding down the road. I don’t care if I cry like a baby when his beloved Steelers win the Superbowl (and they will again, my friends). I don’t care if I get funny looks when I just tear up at a stoplight for no apparent reason (I do that a lot, by the way).

My grief is my own. It’s part of me now. And just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean it’s not there.

Kind of like love.


© Catherine Tidd 2010

Who Knew the Monster Lurking in the Closet Was…Love?

There’s a fear that lies deep in the heart of every widow. It’s not something we talk about a lot. Most of us probably don’t even realize how scared of it we are, but if you can show me one widow who’s not afraid of it, I’ll buy you the winning lottery ticket. Are you ready? Deep breath….

We don’t want to do this again.

I would imagine that most of us, at some point or another, have had a fear of dating. Some widows got over it early and some will never get over it. We talk about how we know we’ll never replace the person who is gone, we don’t have the energy to get out there, and, frankly, how we’re just worried about all the nutjobs that are in the world and would rather not sit down and have a beer with one.

But we don’t often talk about how scared we are of going through a loss again.

One of the hardest parts about losing your spouse is realizing how fragile life is. And that just because something like this has happened once, doesn’t mean it won’t happen again. I often wish, if the universe were a fair place, that once you hit your quota of bad luck, it wouldn’t happen to you anymore. Wouldn’t that be amazing? Not that it would have made losing my husband any easier, but in the end, I could have at least taken a deep breath and thought, “Whew, got that over with.”

But life doesn’t work that way.

Now I’m worried that it’s possible to earn the nickname “Black Widow” before I turn 40. I already can’t stand the idea of chin waxing and I can’t figure out the mysterious popping noise coming out of my right knee. I don’t need another dead spouse.

I’ll never forget talking to a friend of mine a couple of years after my husband died. What started out as a normal conversation about the new house she had rented, slowly turned into her verbalizing a nightmare I’d had since taking the plunge into the dating world.

“Yeah, our landlord lived in this house until her husband died. Then she started dating her neighbor, married him, moved into his house, and then he died. But she just decided to stay over there and rent this house out.”

You may insert your own expletive here.

It takes a lot of guts to get out there and take this risk all over again. And kind of like divorcees…it’s learning to trust again. But it’s not a matter of trusting someone else. It’s being able to trust fate not to send you up you-know-what creek without a paddle again. ‘Cause this time your boat’s a little leaky.

I mean…can you imagine? What if something happens and you’re at the hospital with you second spouse as a doctor is trying to explain what’s going on? Do you just put your hand up in his face and say, “Yeah. I’ve seen this before. You can go about your business”?

You would think they would at least give you a punch card or something at that point.

Now, I didn’t mean to write this to promote this insecurity that we all have. And I certainly didn’t mean to make light of it. This is a real fear. And I’m just as worried about it as any of you. Humor is just my defense mechanism and the only way I can keep myself from going completely around the bend. I think.

Guess we’ll see.

But what I hear from most widows is that the times we had with our spouses were the best times in our lives. We wouldn’t trade them for anything. All of the pain and sadness we have been through cannot equal the amazing experiences we've had.

You cannot love without taking a risk. But if you had shut yourself into a box years ago, you would have never met the person who gave you all of those great times in the first place. I know that getting back out there, after losing someone, is a huge risk. But what if…what if…those good times are not gone? After all, marriage was a 50/50 deal so that means we had to be at least half of the good times. What if we could get to the point, look past the fear, and know that the other half just might be out there again?

We are all people who are capable of great love. If we weren’t, we wouldn’t have lost so much. It’s there. It’s in us. Those people who have decided not to take the risk again…that’s okay. But it’s not because you can’t. You’ve already proven once that you can. We are all in different stages of getting past that fear and, honestly, we’ll probably be working through that for the rest of our lives.

For me, I’m just trying not to take it personally that one guy I know uses the “Itsy Bitsy Spider” as his ring tone when I call.

For more blogs and articles from other widow(er) writers, join us at www.theWiddahood.com!  


© Catherine Tidd 2010

Love: It's Out There...But Are YOU?

Whether you’re widowed or not, love is a tricky business. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never been married, been messily married, or have gotten involuntarily unmarried (I think that’s a better term than “widowed,” don’t you?).

The big question is…do we ever know when it’s the right time to fall in love?

Now, I personally think falling in love is like having a baby…there is no right time. You can wait until your career takes off. You can wait until you feel like you’ve finally sown your last oat. You can wait until that hideous color you died your hair last month finally washes out.

But Mr. Right could still come along while you’re working at Burger King, regretting your “oat” from the night before, and he just might find those purple streaks in your hair endearing.

The point is, you never know.

I hear a lot of people ask the question, “Is it possible for you to love someone else before you learn to love yourself?” But I think that question is more complicated than it seems. Because to truly love yourself, you have to know yourself. And that’s where we run into problems.

I think it’s a very rare thing for people to be able to really look at themselves, with all of their problems and quirks and really love themselves for who they are. How many people do you know just sit around saying with a sigh, “I just love that nail-biting problem I have. I think it makes me so cute.”

For those of us who are widowed, or even those of us who have found and lost love, it’s a time consuming task to figure out who we are. I think a lot of us know who we were. But a lot has changed since some of us said “I do” for the first time.

I’m not the same person I was before my husband died. In the last three years I’ve dealt with loss, raising children, and running a family all on my own. I’ve figured out that I’m moody. I’ve figured out that even though 95% of the time I like to be around people, sometimes I like being alone. I’ve figured out that, when I’m caught between a rock and hard place, I have the ability to dig my way out.

Three years ago, I didn’t know that.

I feel like I’ve been on a journey of self discovery that I didn’t sign up for but has not necessarily been a bad thing. And, ultimately, these discoveries will make me a better partner for someone. And until that someone comes along, they just make me a better person.

I think a lot of us widows go through a time when we worry that we may not find anyone else. If you’ve made it through this transition knowing, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you will be able to meet Mr. Right, Round II then I applaud you. Because most of us wonder if it’s possible to get struck by lightening twice in one life. And some of us wonder if we have the courage to get out there in the storm.

We wonder if we have what it takes to date, to meet a stranger, to invest ourselves again. And some of us wonder, after life has dealt us such a crippling blow, if we will ever make a good partner for someone else. We are plagued with self doubt and insecurities brought about by the past and lose confidence in what we might bring to the table in the future.

But I think that we’re looking at it backwards. We sit around and wonder who would want to take us on. We wonder who would want to date someone with kids and enough baggage to sink a ship. We wonder who would want to supplement the three pedicure a week habit we sometimes have when things get rough (okay…I know that just applies to me, but you get my point).

In reality we should looking at it in a different way. Who is lucky enough to enter our lives and be a part of a great family? Who is fortunate enough to meet us, people who know what love is and how to work on a relationship even through the toughest times? Who wouldn’t appreciate a woman with stunning toes?

We should look at ourselves as people who really know who we are and what we want. What we are and our experiences are a gift to someone else. And instead of saying, “I’ve been in love before, it will never happen a second time,” we should know that because we recognized love when we saw it and were willing to take the risk before, there’s a very good chance it will happen again.

We just have to have enough courage to get out into the rain.

For more blogs and articles from other widow(er) writers, join us at www.theWiddahood.com!  

© Catherine Tidd 2010