An Assault On Myself By Myself

Maybe I’m remembering this all wrong. Maybe I’m not the person I think I am. I have grasped tightly to the label “widow” as its definition most closely mirrors how I view myself, but is that even wrong? Do I even deserve that? I would have done anything for you, Ryan. We talked about this and I was setting everything up to make that happen because it was best for you – so it was necessary for us.

The abandonment by those around me, the ones who promised when no promise was requested, the ones who never made a promise to begin with, the ones you expected by default to stay and the ones you truly felt would…have they left because I carry a tag they think I do not deserve? Have they made the connections in the string of events, cast their blame, and turned their backs on me because of it? I hate them for doing that but I understand that decision, because I do carry the blame. I have chosen, months later now, to learn from the regrets but am nowhere near forgiveness for the guilt. The bits and pieces that are separated into those 2 piles are very well defined now; I am rational at least, enough to see that. Regrets would not have changed the outcome, they would have simply provided better memories to me, the survivor, and maybe for my Love, though not survived. The horrible details that are placed in the guilt pile are the ones which undoubtedly would have kept him here by my side. I do not wish for them to be in that pile, I do not choose them to be. They simply are. Perhaps then, to others, I am a person so unloveable and painful to be around that removing me entirely is a rational decision I just cannot see for myself. 

Perhaps I an addict to grief and unwilling to admit it.

I know my brain is warped. In a bizarre way it’s almost as if I can feel that I am not just chemically but structurally different.  Feeling physiologically incapable of tasks that you were otherwise competent to perform is so incredibly frustrating.

I want Ryan back. I also want my brain back. I don’t need a diagnosis because I already recognize this environment that I am residing in – one so atypical for me. I sit back as a casual observer wondering who this person is with an obvious aphasia, with anxiety, the woman who cannot retain information, who cannot carry conversations on with multiple people at a time because the conversations in her head cannot be kept separate from those flowing from her lips. Who is that person? This woman who observes herself externally…she studied this, this was her passion, the study of neurobiology put a smile on her face and woke her up for years on early mornings and kept her locked in a dark room late at night to better understand this phenomenal structure that is the mammalian brain.

That woman is now trapped by a mind she cannot escape, by a brain that attacks her when she least expects. Her decisions over the last 7 months and 15 days have not always been logical or appropriate, though she extends to herself forgiveness for those. But how do you continue to wake up when waking up entails constantly fighting yourself to hit a level best described as functional? If struggling for that is the best I’ve got, and if that alone exhausts me, how will I ever expect to hit a plane dubbed successful again? Why, Brain, why are you attacking me? Why, Body, are you so slow to recover and so quick to break down? I am not wallowing, I am fucking trying!