Anniversaries superimposed

[Mizpah]

Today would've been my and DH's 10th anniversary, but instead it's my and NG's 5th.  (With 364 other days in the year, how does this happen?!)

 

The only-three years DH and I spent together were so little objectively speaking, so short.  It's been my shortest relationship (his longest - but he was so young, so very young).  And yet we packed a whole lifetime of love and life into those years somehow.  I doubt I'll ever feel that close to someone, that there could ever be so much mutual understanding between people.  

This past decade has been a whirlwind.  I think I have some emotional/identity whiplash or chaos inside.  I'm trying to catch myself up to my life.  Life doesn't seem to allow time for dust to settle.  I feel like some time as a nun or a Buddhist monk or something could do me some good - cloistered, away, alone, some silence and solitude and stillness to try to make sense of life, being, personhood, attachment, love, death, existence.....  But there is no pause button.  

[Leadfeather]

17 minutes ago, Mizpah said:

I think I have some emotional/identity whiplash or chaos inside.  I'm trying to catch myself up to my life.  Life doesn't seem to allow time for dust to settle.  

 

I can identify with the identity whiplash. I was talking to my mother last night. She lives a block away and was widowed a year before I was. She saw an interview with a man who had lost both legs on TV. He said something to the effect that he could not find peace with the loss of his legs until his identity caught up with his reality.

I have been thinking about that statement all morning. It has made me realize I still struggle with identifying myself as I did for the 25 years I was married. I identify as being part of a committed couple. I am need to align my identity with the new reality that I am a single man. It would be nice for life to stop for a while and let us take a deep breath and adjust. But we have to adjust on the fly. Having realized this I am actually more at peace this morning that I have been for a while. 

[Eddienhp]

Wow, I never thought of identity whiplash/change in identity. Maybe that is why I can't seem to go into a new relationship. I do still feel I identify as a wife; still married. Its an interesting concept. Thanks for sharing!

Eileen