After a miserable evening and night ...

It's weird on this grief journey.
The different "stages" - you don't go in a straight line.
You don't move from 1 to 2 to 3 and so on.
Or at least I don't.
In all the years thru all the losses, I haven't made the trip along the "stages" the right way then either.
But now? Oh my. I am literally bouncing all over the place!
Stage 1, then 7, then 51, then 2, then 3, then 28, then ...
I wonder if this is what a pinball feels like in one of those old games?
Only I am not a steel ball - I am a fluffy and messy package of me.
And all I am trying to do is to breathe in and breathe out.
Trying to figure out who I am - without Rick.
Trying to figure out how I am going to get thru this without him.
I talk too much.
I laugh too loud.
I cry too often.
I am too brutally honest.
I write things that are most likely better left not in print.
I say things that I cannot take back.
I hear words from others that stir my soul, which they wish I had not heard (or at least not remembered).
I am me.
No excuses.
I. am. me.
I am surrounded by others - and yet I am indescribably alone and lonely.
I have been more numb than not for the last 33 weeks - perhaps even before that, when Rick was sick, especially this whole year.
But the woman inside of me is waking up.
And she hurts in a way that I never thought she would.
On every level.
And honestly? I don't know which is worse - to have the mind numbing pain (at least to be numb) or to now be actually FEELING what I feel.
The woman in me is waking up to find emptiness and loneliness, no one to share it with, no one to touch that lostness within me.
Always before when we walked in grief, Rick was with me.
And when the numbness would begin to wear off - he was there to hold me, to wipe my tears away, to listen to my anger, to just tell me that we would make it thru all this.
Just for the record, in case I haven't said it in a while ...
I HATE BEING A WIDOW!
I miss being a wife, a woman.
I miss being held. loved. cherished.
I miss reaching up and laying my hand on his face - just loving him and giving him me.
I want to hear that there is Hope and Promise.
But this is my life now ... and I refuse to give up.
Death will NOT have the victory in my life - not like this.
I will fight my way thru ... bumbling and stumbling ... crying until I laugh ... laughing until I cry.
This. is. me.
And this - is my fight song ...