I have been feeling that old exhaustion. Why bother to get out of bed if my husband's dead? That is a really bad rhyming sentence. I think editing my solo show for the DVD added to the second anniversary of his death fast approaching is part of it. I am trying to look at the show, Pull Me Back, as a project. I have never edited anything before and it is fun. However, being in a dark room looking at images of my husband all day eventually got to me. He is so vivid in picture and sound. I can make him do anything I want - except come off the screen back into life.
Today, though, was the perfect example of moving. I did that old behavior of not getting out of bed when I woke up - made myself go back to sleep over and over again. Then I got up and went out to take care of some business. When I got back a friend called and asked me to go to lunch. I wanted to say NO NO NO. I was actually feeling physically sick. However, I said yes. I didn't put on makeup or brush my hair (pulled it into a side pony tail) so I even looked lumpy and slumpy. With good conversation, laughter, and delicious mac and cheese all of me feels better. I was going to cancel my writing group tonight and instead feel like going and will even brush my hair!
Sometimes it is very hard to start moving. I have all these great projects going and sometimes that makes me happy and sometimes it makes me exhausted. Even after almost two years it still seems weird and uncomfortable doing anything without sharing it with Artie. He says I am sharing it with him - me of little faith - but sharing things with a dead person is very different than sharing it with a live person!
That date I almost went on - not only didn't he call like he said he would - when I e-mailed and said I was curious why men say they will call and don't - he e-mailed me and said he was sick and would call later. That was a week ago. At least I'm old enough to know better than to contact him again. Eek, eek, and eek! On the other hand, the friend I had lunch with after dating a lot of unkind people is at 45 getting married for the first time to a very loving man who adores her. Maybe my heart isn't ready for anyone new.
In July I am going to trance camp! http://www.stephengilligan.com/TRANCEcamp.html I'm looking forward to having time in San Diego away from the real world (and hot humid NYC). Hopefully some more pieces of the jigsaw puzzle will slide together. Sometimes I have almost the whole puzzle put together and someone tips the table over and I have to start again. Me. I'm the one that tips the table over. When I start to feel bad I stop doing all the things that make me feel good. I don't know why. It's like I'm a building and when I get to be 20 stories high I say - well, I don't need those steel beams any more - and eat lousy food, don't listen to my tapes, don't exercise, sleep too much - all of which make me feel worse. Silly old me.
I put on Facebook this quote from the end of Camelot - where King Arthur knows that the round table has failed and his beloved Guinevere has betrayed him with Lancelot -and he knights a young boy named Tom and tells him to live on and tell the story of the idea of Camelot. He says Tom is "One of what we all are. Less than a drop in the great blue motion of the sunlit sea. But, it seems that some of the drops sparkle. Some of them do sparkle." I always cry at those lines. The love Artie and I have sparkles so brightly. He still sparkles - even though I knew the quiet, frightened, sad, struggling side of him as well. I want to be one of the drops that sparkle. It more difficult now - but still possible. I know I will keep telling the stories.
Here's to being a drop that sparkles - not all the time - but even if only for a second once a week - because each sparkle can light up a sparkle in someone else. If for no one else, let me sparkle so that Artie can see me - and I can see and feel him - if not in my arms - in my heart and my mind.
Hoping you are not slumpy, lumpy or grumpy - but if you are - I hope someone you love - dead or alive - breathes gently on your neck - and tickles you into a smile. xo
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