Some doors open, some go round and round

 When I was going through my divorce, I would wake up in the morning and remind myself my marriage was over. He was gone. The life I thought I would have forever was no more. It would take a few minutes to adjust my thoughts and feelings and then I’d make myself get up and get the day started. I knew if I stayed in bed too long, I’d never get up. Never get out. I don’t remember how long that routine lasted but I can remember exactly how it felt. It took so much energy to think and smile and just be a person. My feet were heavy. My mind was dull. My smile was fake.

It’s been over nine months since Robby died, and I still find myself having to remember he’s gone. I wake up some mornings and it takes a second or so to say, oh, yeah, Robby’s dead. I see his picture in the kitchen when I’m getting something to drink and think, I should text him about dinner and then it sinks in that I can’t. Sometimes I try to stop everything and stay in that moment to feel that feeling I had just a second before I realized he’s gone, where I’m not sad or clouded. But I can’t make it happen no matter how still I am. And then it becomes hard to breathe. Hard to move. Hard to remember what day it is and what I am supposed to be doing.

My days are a mix of remembering, forgetting, ignoring, and trying to stay so busy I don’t have time to be sad or lonely. There are large parts of my days that I don’t remember very much because I’m so busy pushing everything down. I can’t focus. And then when I try to remember, I just remember one thing, I’m sad. Really sad. The kind of sad that sticks in your chest and makes you feel like something is squeezing your heart, slowly suffocating you but you don’t want to take a deep breath because you may start crying.

But I don’t want anyone to know. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to feel it. It scares me. I worry if I let myself feel it, when can I stop it? Will I be able to turn it off so I can work a full day without messing up? My job requires great attention to detail. I can get lost in those details for hours. That’s comforting. I can stay focused for hours so long as I am busy. I don’t want to lose that. I already feel like everyone is watching me, waiting for me to lose it. To not smile. To cry. To be sad. To screw up. To call in sick and stay gone a few days. I don’t want that to happen either. 

I was listening to a Foo Fighters song, ‘End Over End,’ the other day and I started thinking about the intro lyrics:

Burn all the candles out
Make a wish but not aloud
Relive the here and now
See you now and then
I'm a revolvin' door
I've seen it all before
I will begin again
But I can't start until I've seen the end

As I swirled the words around in my head, it made me realize I can’t wait until the end to start living again. I mean really living where I'm not holding back, holding everything in, and just floating through my day. I have no idea if that’s what the lyrics are about, but that’s what I started thinking about. I feel like right now I’m just reliving the same day over and over. Wake up, don’t be sad. Get up and get dressed. Go outside and smile. Talk to people and make them laugh. Eat healthy and try to exercise even though you don’t want to. Answer your phone and your texts. Don’t get mad when you are corrected. Tell people you’re OK just trying to stay busy. Hug your children and tell them you love them. Get overly upset about other people’s real problems and try to find a way to help them. Look through online dating ads and think you might be ready to try tomorrow. Clean the house and buy groceries. Make plans and keep them. Drink a glass of wine or two and watch TV alone. Try to pretend you care about other people’s seemingly trivial bullshit. Take a shower and put on your dead husband’s old T-shirt. Read your book or watch more TV. Wonder if you told your children goodnight and kissed them? Get so tired you finally fall asleep. Wake up and do it all over again. And again, and again, and again. Like the revolvin’ door. It’s exhausting and mind numbing, and I really need to find a way stop it. I just can't see a way out right now and if I'm honest, this is just easier for me right now.

What’s funny is I hate using a revolving door. I get anxious. Do you slow down for people to get in? Will they slow down for you? What if my bag gets stuck in that slender gap or what if I’m separated from my kids and I can’t get them to get out with me? I mean, why not just have a regular entryway? A door that makes it easy to go inside and outside. Why make it harder for people to get in and out of a building? It's because we get so used to thinking the revolving door is somehow faster or somehow easier, that we get in it and go around and get anxious and exhausted even though a perfectly normal door is usual nearby. But usually totally unnoticed. 

Sometimes I pass the normal door because I think it must be locked or not allowed because no one else is using it. Everyone is going around and around, going inside and outside, and never reaching for the handle of the easy door that’s right there. I mean, it’s right there. Easy to reach. Easy to open. Easy to close. But so hard to see.