Looking Back, Facing Forward

Sometimes I think about what I would change knowing what I know now. The pastime is tempting but leads to regret. I’m not who I was. I can’t go back, though God knows how much I want to. What if we hadn’t sold our home on Del Rio? If we’d stayed there, we’d have never moved to the mountains where covid tracked us down. But if we’d locked ourselves inside our house, we’d have betrayed our own hearts.

We rejected that. Both of us did. No one brought us a contract to sign, promising that if we avoided humanity, we would never catch a man-made virus. No one can guarantee that. More accidents occur in the home than anywhere else which makes me wonder just how safe it is to shelter there.

We don’t have control. I don’t have control. I could write that a thousand times and still something inside me wants to scream, “No!” The same guttural cry I screamed after Rob died when no one was around to hear me. And now, just as then, I have limited influence. I resent it. I resist it. Dozens of times a day we’re reminded that somewhere outside our view lies the remote control we’re missing. 

When the power goes off in the middle of a storm. 

When the baby gets sick and you have to cancel dinner plans. 

When the airline changes your reservations without asking and doesn’t care if it makes your life harder. 

When the temp outside exceeds your A/C’s ability to keep up.

When you go the doctor’s office with a fever and shortness of breath, and still they send you home.

We have no control.

Control freaks get a bad rap. The term sounds unhinged and selfish, but there’s usually a reason why people fight for the keys to their private world. Devoid of control, it seems I pay the price for the randomness that rules my existence like a roulette wheel. No wonder I hold on for dear life to everything that is dear in my life, until the wheel’s centrifugal force throws me to the side and whatever will be, finally is. Reminding me once again,

Control is an illusion.

I don’t know what the rest of my life is going to look like from here. I don’t know who I am anymore. I’m living a life I never asked for. I loved the life I had for as long as I had it. When it was taken away from me, it vanished without a trace. I want it back. I can’t have it back. I’m stranded here in the middle of nowhere, a woman without the relationship she enjoyed with the man she loved all her life.

I’m living in the in-between. The space between what I had and what I don’t yet see. There’s a word for this—liminal. It means a threshold, a doorway, a transitional space between places. I see it as a wavering place where the longing to go back pulls my heart, but my logical mind keeps telling the truth—I can’t.

Three months after Rob died, weary of wandering along the arrow-pocked floors of IKEA one afternoon, I stopped cold in front of a large photo on the wall, unable to take my eyes off it. A wide rope bridge spread out over a river-carved chasm drew me in, its far-off, narrowed length exiting into the foggy green hillside where an enormous tree spread its arms in welcome. The photo is mesmerizing and peaceful, but the bridge leads into the unknown, inviting the observer to trust its swaying fibers, cross it single file, and discover what lies on the other side. There are no promises. There are no certainties. No companions. Not even any hints as to what awaits. It simply beckons.

It's mysterious and terrifying. And now it hangs on my wall because it looks the way my life feels. I didn’t ask to be here. I can’t find my way back. I don’t know what lies ahead. I’m frozen, even paralyzed at times, not knowing how to take the next step because I can’t see a next step. I only see a questionable bridge that ends in a forest shrouded by fog.

I’m frustrated. Deeply sad. Often angry. Impatient with my lack of motivation, yet aware of the energy absorbed by the necessity of grief, I exist here at a shadowy gateway without the benefit of a roadmap, wondering what will become of me and if I will remain here forever. Knowing I must be kind to myself in the interim while I wait and see. Just,

Standing.

Listening.

Weeping.

Swaying.

Sighing.

Remembering to be gentle with my liminal self in this place where I am neither this nor that. Caught by my circumstances, companion of grief. Giving myself permission to be, knowing this is all the control I have, I live in limbo. Here. 

In the in-between.