I hesitated only because there are so many aspects of me. Thinking about me, I realised something though. I really know very little about me.
I don't just mean the uncertainty of parentage ( and that is a best left until another time). I mean the real 'nitty-gritty' of what makes me, me.
I came to understand that I am many things to many people, and yet know little of who I am to me.
Perhaps I have spent too long wondering about genetics, too long trying to please, and if not too please then at least to comply? Perhaps I have spent so long being someone for someone I have not developed myself? Perhaps I never tried to find out who I am? I have no idea and if I analyse it much more, then nothing about me will ever develop and this entry will never be written.
So I decided just to tell you a little of the latest label I have been added. Alongside child, wife, mother and all the other labels that are given to us within our family structure, I am now a widow.
This has without doubt been the most painful experience I have ever undergone. It was also one of the most frightening experiences I could have. There has never been another in my life which has come close to touching me as this has done. The thousand emotions flooding through me at once. The disbelief, and at the same time, the contrasting certainty that it had happened. The fear of it, realising that it was over. Ended and I could do nothing to alter it. I remember sobbing that I didn't want him to be dead and begging for someone to make him come back, and yet, in my mind, I knew none of them could. Yet still I could not stop asking. At that moment, I knew I could not go on without him, and at the same time I knew I had no choice. There were no options for me.
A lot of that time is unclear in my memory, I have disjointed memories, and some parts never seemed to register in my mind at all. One thing was constant though, the way my mind seemed to work on multiple things at once. I was grieving, trying to sort funeral details, and yet throughout, I was thinking of the future. One thing I knew beyond all doubt was I had to be strong. I don't mean that I tried to push my grief aside, if anything I sat back and let it roll over me in waves. I knew I would have to try and move forward, that I would need to do all that was needed to support my family, to pay the bills, to do the chores, to tend the garden, I would need to find a way to become all that was needed. To become, as my daughter would say...'hardcore mum!'
Have I achieved all this? I wish I could tell you yes, but you deserve honesty. I have survived though. There has been food on our table, our bills are, for the most part, paid, and the garden, well, there is progress. Which although slight, has given me a sense of pride.
One thing I learnt about myself through all of this, is that I needed to decide what I wanted from the rest of my life. I had to figure out who I really am and what I could do. I did not want the changes, but I needed to embrace them and to deal with all they brought.
Life is short, this had been sharply proved to me, and it was brought home to me that if I have things in my life I wish to achieve, then I better get my ass in gear. I still have no long term plans, but I am happy with my tiny steps, and the small achievements I have made. The positive changes, and the feelings that they give.
I am still a widow, I still grieve, more than I will ever show you here, but I am more than all that. I am strong, I can be brave, I can smile and laugh, even when I feel so removed from all that.
As an amazing young lady tells me, I am.... "HARDCORE MUM!"
Enough of that though, I will leave you with a picture which tells you so much more about me...
