January Pt 2

I had made the choice to extend my trip in South Africa past the end of my meetings to take a few days in Cape Town and then head to Krueger National Park for a safari.

I spent mornings and afternoons bumming around the city, finding things to keep me busy and spent evenings with friends eating insanely good food and laughing until the early hours of the next day.

On the second morning I woke up determined to climb Table Mountain. I took the bus to the departure point and picked the route at the lower gondola platform.

This is one of those things a person should research first.

I started walking up steps cut into the rocky hillside before turning a corner, finding myself faced with a sheer cliff. There were rungs cut into it and I started pulling myself up, ignoring the signs warning me not to attempt this alone.

What’s the worst that could happen?

The trail split a few times and I had to backtrack more than once before rounding a corner that gave me a breathtaking view of Camps Bay and the endless ocean. I continued to inch forward, hugging the cliffside in a few places. The trail finally widened as it entered a boulder choked gully, marked by the occasional painted footprint.

When I finally crested the top, drenched in sweat, there was a sign stating “This is not an easy way down”… maybe a warning at the bottom would have been worthwhile? Also, lies. That trail had several very fast, very easy ways down.

I had also made the decision to relaunch dating apps a week before I left for SA so I was spending time talking with people while I was away. And it was booooooring.

Except for one person, a wid I had met through one of the widow Facebook groups. She and I were chatting a lot and it was a great distraction from traveling alone.

I left early one morning for Krueger on a 737. It was a quick 1.5 hour flight that ended with us touching down on a clay tarmac that had public road crossings, only marked by a stop sign to stop cars from being run over by a jet.

From my seat I watched hawks soaring above the Savannah and saw a family of wild boars rush to escape the plane as we taxied, finally ending up at a terminal with mud walls and a thatch roof.

My driver was waiting for me with a sign “Mr Johnson Ben”. I jumped in and we drove about an hour to the park. A massive gate awaited us and as it opened and I couldn’t help but think of John Hammond “Welcome… to Krueger National Park”

Living

I haven’t been very good at writing for several months. There’s plenty of reasons for this, work, kids, lots of adventures. But more than anything else I honestly haven’t had a good way of describing what has been happening in my life.

You see, I started this project to help me pause and listen to myself. To dive into how I’m feeling. Sharing these stories also forces me to stop and think about my life. About what’s happening to me and what I’m doing. It was never about suicide, not directly. It’s about what comes next. It’s about the life I’ve been forced to live after Christine left me alone. Those first months were so full of raw, painful emotion. Every minute was consumed with thoughts of what I could have done differently, of all the mistakes I made as a husband. My failures. Suicide is the antagonist, but I’m the protagonist in my story. I’m sometimes the hero and sometimes the villain, but it’s about me and the choices I’ve made.

I sound like a textbook narcissist. I don’t care.

I’ve written a few posts so far this year, but I haven’t really broken down what’s happened since I made the decision to live. That is a weird thing to say because unless I was planning to take my own life wouldn’t I have defaulted to life? But I’ve discovered that living is a choice. And living in this case is not the opposite of dying. It’s the opposite of existing. On January 1st I drew a line in the sand and told myself NO MORE. No more letting days pass around me while I did little more than moving forward, one breath at a time. No more escaping to my room and hiding from the world. I’m done with that idea of life.

As I wrote before, I died. Or rather, who I was died. That guy is gone. Poof. There’s a lot I miss about him. Dude really didn’t give a shit about anything. He was invincible. Or so he thought. He was also so twisted by insecurities. He hated himself. He wasn’t the best dad. He wasn’t the best husband. Not as good as he could have been. But damn he was good at putting on a good face and smiling his way through all the problems he was hiding.

That stuff was really hard to think through. I made mistakes I didn’t even know I was making. I was so lost in my little world I thought I understood that I never took the time to think about how my actions might be affecting others.

RIP that guy.

So it’s time to catch you up on what happened next. There is some good, some bad. There are things I’m proud of and things I’m sorry for. I’ve won some and lost some. There was a black mamba that jumped at me, and spiders, I almost lost my job, I learned what friendship really means, I’ve become a better dad than I’ve ever been. I’ve lived. And I’m not done.

So here’s what happened next.

Forgetting

Hey Babe,

I’m having a hard time remembering you. Not you in general but the little things. I can’t remember your favorite foods, your favorite songs, your favorite movies. It’s hard for me to remember your face without pictures. I don’t remember the things we laughed at as easily. My memories are becoming more abstract and you haven’t been in my dreams for a really long time.

I feel like I’m losing you. Again.

And I feel like a terrible person because of it.

I’m sorry.

The Things People Say

I’ve written before about the weird grief comments people have, whether it’s the optometrist telling me how bad she felt when Anthony Bourdain killed himself or the bizarre need strangers have to tell me about the death of their pets. And I get it, I really do. We all want to show empathy and as experiential beings we do that by sharing stories we believe gives us common ground. It’s stupid, but it’s why we do it and I usually laugh it off.

However, there is one particular group that I can’t handle.

Divorcees.

Not those people in general. Getting a divorce does not make you a bad person. Not even a little.

It’s a very specific sub-group of divorced people: the ones who want to compare their divorce to becoming widowed.

I understand that divorce can be very painful and it could lead to a deep emptiness, a longing, sadness, depression, guilt, self-loathing and a plethora of other hurtful feelings.

But I only understand this in an academic sense. I don’t know what going through a divorce is like because I’ve never been through one. Because I’ve never been through a divorce I have to trust the reports of those who have. I would never in a million years compare my wife dying to someone’s divorce.

Because they’re incomparable.

They can’t be compared because they are not the same thing.

Since this shitty chapter of my life begun I’ve heard from people that they’d prefer to have had their spouse dead than be divorced because it would have been easier.

I want to break that down for a second because here’s what these people are saying:

“I know you are grieving the death of your spouse, I know you’ve told me of the unimaginable pain it’s brought to your life, but I would have preferred your experience than divorce because it’s would have been so much more simple.”

Fuck you.

And this hasn’t only happened once. This is a regular occurrence. I’ve heard it from acquaintances, from near strangers, friends. Usually it’s in a dismissive way, sometimes with deep emotion.

I don’t care.

Look, own your pain. Please. If you want to talk to me about how painful your divorce was/is I’m hear to listen. Really. It was a terrible experience for you and I will absolutely be there in any way I can.

We can even talk about both experiences. We can both talk through our pain.

But I will not allow you to compare your divorce to my very very very different experience.

And why would you want to?

Closer

I haven’t written for a while. A lot of things have happened. Some good, some bad. I’ll get back to that in the coming days.

I took time off because I felt like writing all these things had begun to put me in grief spiral where I kept concentrating on feeling bad instead of processing my feelings. I didn’t want to wallow in that place.

But now I’m back there regardless. Today is the anniversary of the day we left for Norway. The trip Christine didn’t come back from. These next two weeks are going to be tough. Really really tough.

I’m scared. Terrified of what’s coming. Of the things I will feel. I want to stop time. I want to pull myself out of this and reappear in the future. I don’t want this experience.

Feelings and feeling and feelings.

But I have to live it. There’s no choice. And so I’m back to writing, to processing, to working through all these damn feelings.

Here we go.