Support

I was watching a tv show, and one of the characters who’d lost the man she’d loved was talking to another woman whose husband had died more recently. She said, “At first, everyone’s there. But after a while, people forget. Everyone moves on. Everyone but you.”

There are definitely days when I feel like that.

But there are others when I feel the support still.

It it makes it hard for me to talk about one or the other. I feel like if I talk about the times I feel like everyone except me has moved on, I’m minimizing the support I am getting. But if I talk only about how lucky I am and how people are still being so wonderful, I’m denying my own fundamental loneliness.

I’m lucky. I really am. I have a few really good friends who are there for me. I have my mother. I have Ian’s mom and family.

There are some days when all that doesn’t seem real. That all I can feel is how my best friend is gone, and no one – nothing – can compare to him.

And then I spend an evening with someone on that supportive list, and feel like there’s hope out there somewhere.

Talking here about only one of those times feels like I’m negating, or denying the others. But talking about them both at the same time feels confusing… Muddled.

But I guess that’s how it is, isn’t it? Confusing. Muddled. A miasma of conflicting and baffling emotions. Stick your hand into the pot of them and sometimes you come up with an apple, sometimes a frog, and sometimes a handful of poop. Then there are the times where you come up with the slime smeared diamond. It’s not cut and dried, black and white.

It’s all shades of grey.

Written 12/20/2014