Unsettled

Unsettled

I can't describe.

I can't explain it.

I just feel blah.

In a funk.

Lost.

Unsure of my future.

Unsettled.

My friend told me “All who wander are not lost.”. I hope she is right.  Because right now I really feel lost.  I haven't felt like this for months.  

I feel as if I have turned a corner in my grief.  I now know I WANT to live. I know I need to discover who I am now.  I know I need to find what makes ME happy.  Not my husband. Not my son.  Me. I know I need to find what makes me happy.  I just have no idea what it is.  And that's the hard part.  

That is the part that has me so unsettled.

See, I promised myself I would mourn Jared for 2 years.  No exceptions.  I will grieve his loss forever.  I will miss him for the rest of my life.  I will love him until my last breath. But I told myself that I would mourn him for 2 years.  That I would not be happy.  That I would not move forward with my life.  That I would not begin to live again.  And my 2 years of mourning will not end until 9/16/16.  So the fact that I feel like I want to live again before my self imposed mourning ends has me discombobulated.  Feeling guilty.  Like I am betraying my husband.  Like I am breaking my promise.

The irony of my guilt...my husband made me promise to live.  He would tell me that not living is breaking my promise to him.  And yet I don't feel guilty about that.

Grief makes no sense.  I don't expect anyone to understand my conundrum.  I don't even understand it!  But I'm realizing I have to figure it out, make it make sense to myself so that I can take the next step in my grief work.  In healing.  

I will always love my husband. I will always miss him. And no amount of time will ever change that. But yet here I am, feeling guilty that I want to honor my promise to him but in doing so I feel like I am breaking a promise to myself.  Guilt...every widow's best friend and worse enemy.

Why am I so unsettled? I think it is because my self-imposed time frame is coming to an end in two short months and I have no idea what to do after that. What will I do? Where will I go? Who will I become? These are all unanswered questions. And that scares me. I am one who is used to having a plan. Knowing exactly what I'm going to do from to get from A to Z. But grief has thrown me for a loop. There is no plan. No map to follow. And because of that I just feel lost.  And the person I would talk about all of this with, whose advice I would seek, who would hug me and kiss me and tell me it would be okay is not here. And I worry that I will be disappointing him. Would he approve of my future plans? Would he be happy with the choices I make? Would he be proud? Once again questions that have no answer.  

I have always been a decisive, don't seek approval from any one person. But my grief, losing my love, has changed that. I find myself second-guessing my decisions. I find myself questioning am I doing the right thing. And I am uncomfortable with this. What happened to that confident girl who knew exactly what she wanted and would let nothing stop her from getting it? Where did she go? When Jared died, a part of me died too. And his death has changed me forever. Everything I thought I knew to be true was changed in a blink of an eye. And now I have to find myself again. I have to find that confidence in my own abilities again. I have to learn to trust myself and my decision-making again. And I have to trust, that I am making the best choices, the best decisions possible with the information that I have. And in 6 months I may decide that I need to make another change, that another decision would be best.  But the biggest question is what do I want for myself now. And the answer is, I have no idea.  But I have to figure it out. Find the answers to these questions. Discover the path I want to follow now. And pray that I am making the right choices. And hope that my husband would be proud. But, how do I do that?  Where do I start? And how do I do it without feeling guilty?  I know I will not truly be able to start finding the answers to these questions until after my self-imposed time of mourning has ended. If I try to find the answers or make any big changes before that time, I know in my heart of hearts I will not be happy with myself. I will only feel tremendous guilt. So instead, I will start some self-reflection, start making a list of what I want, and thinking about how to get there so that when my heart is ready, I will be ready.

In a funk.

Lost.

Unsure of my future.

Unsettled.

But hopeful.