My Ears Hurt

One of the stranger things that has come with this grief is that noise really bothers me.  I mean it really bothers me.  It can drive me crazy.  Fortunately my kids are older and the two still at home are fairly quiet guys but I do have to go out into the world and we live in a chaotic, noisy world.  People are so free to honk their horns when you are too slow, too fast, or any minor infraction.  When you go into a store the PA systems are extremely annoying.  Do you think they have any idea how many of us choose to go to a store that uses walky talkies instead of PA systems.  I know which stores use the walky-talky system and they are my friends.  Walmart is almost unbearable for me these days.  It seems like they take a poll when the employees arrive for the day to see who has the worst attitude and the most grating voice and they put her (yes, it is usually a her) on the PA for the day.  I have heard them use tones of voice over the PA that would not even be appropriate on a face to face level.  I leave angry a lot.

There are some people I try to avoid altogether because they are loud or terse and my grieving brain and body cannot handle much extra.  The best way to describe this is, I get one cup of energy, if that, at the beginning of the day and anything that sucks that energy has to go.  One cup is hardly enough to get me through the day as it is and sometimes that is all used up by noon.  I have been through a war zone and I have little tolerance right now for relationships that take much work or are high maintenance.  So please forgive me if I may seem to blunt and maybe a little too to the point at times, I just don't have time or energy for head games right now. It has very little to do with you and everything to do with how many drops are left in my cup and how much more of my day I have left.

I went out with some friends on another friends sail boat for a nice evening sail.  Lot's of pictures were taken and it saddened me to see how sad I looked.  I had a wonderful time and did not feel sad in the moment but who I am has changed.  There is a sadness in my soul right now and it seeps out.  It oozes from my pores.  It is not who I used to be.  I used to love a party, fellowship, friends, being hospitable.  Now it is work.  Now I go to every event without Mr. Social Butterfly.  I could hide behind Tom's ability to talk to anyone.  I could interject and everyone thought I was equally as social as Tom.   One thing many people don't know about me is that I am very shy inside, I have just learned to compensate very well but now, without my crutch, this is a very challenging thing for me.  I just don't go to social things unless I have someone safe with me and even then I often have to psych myself up to do it if it there will be new people there.

So, the question is, who am I now?  Who will I be when I get out of this valley of the shadow of death?  Will I always have this sadness that accompanies me?  What will happiness look like when you have spent so much time on the valley floor begging for survival?  Who am I as a person without Tom?  I don't know the answers to any of that.  I just know that I am still very fragile.  I read a quote on another widows blog that says it very well, " I used to bring the party and now I bring the silence."  And God will be enough.