What am I missing?

What is it that you feel is missing from your life right now? List as many or as few items as you like.

I kind of feel like the last twenty years are missing. I was joking on a Patreon post the other day that between hanging out with someone I’ve known more than 20 years and listening to a lot of 80s music when we’re driving places, I keep trying to shift gears like I was still driving a manual (haven’t driven one in almost 20 years), And I keep trying to put a date that’s about twenty years ago, when I have to write something with a date stamp. SO WEIRD.

I mean, there are other missing things – romance, holding hands (but you could make a solid argument for me not getting those things when I was married, so… sorry/not sorry for calling you out, Tim, but romantic, you were not) – but I have so many deep and rich friendships, is not having the other, really a loss? Am I really missing something when I have friends who hug freely, give their love freely, give of their time and their hearts?

I miss traveling… again, sorry, Tim, but you didn’t like to really go places and do things. If I put my foot down about it, you’d go, and you’d always say what fun it was, but you never initiated a travel idea. Even whenever we went to Disney, which was a lot, I did all the suggesting, planning, and arranging. And you didn’t like to go to Cons, or away to the beach or mountains for a weekend… so again, am I really missing those things if I never had them? Well, OK, I had science fiction conventions… but hopefully that’s something I can get back to doing, now.

Is there something that you had in the past that you wish you still had?

My sanity….? The ability to remember things longer than about twelve seconds? The ability to sit and read a few hundred pages of a good book. That, I do miss. Surely this can’t be the same brain that would read and reread The Chronicles of Amber every year… now I can barely concentrate on anything more challenging than a comic book.

Do you feel like you are simply destined not to have some of the things you may want out of life? Where did this belief come from?

Yep, and I don’t know where it came from. Life beating me down, recently, maybe?

Is there a time in your past that you “realized” it just might not be in the cards?

Not that I suddenly woke up one day and realized it, but more like… time passes. The stuff doesn’t happen. If I don’t choose to make room for it, to make it happen, it’s not going to just… fall into my lap.

Can you think of anyone you know that has the thing that is missing from your life? What did he or she do differently than what you’re doing right now?

Nah, I don’t like to play those kind of comparison games. A long, long time ago, I did that a few times. Looked at people’s houses, book collections, job salaries, time off to travel, how many cats they had, how cozy they lived, and I would judge myself by what I was missing that they had. Then as I really spent time getting to know those people….? Almost all of them were… well, shall we say that they had hidden, and not so hidden demons. Alcoholism. Failed relationships. Bad relationships. They were mean. They were petty. They had no boundaries and wouldn’t abide by mine. They traveled so much they were never home and didn’t have any close friends to come home to any more. So I don’t compare myself any more. Just because a thing is missing from my life, doesn’t mean I’m going to find my answer to it in someone else’s.

Why do you think this thing is missing? (lack of time, finances, energy, etc.). Try to find as many “reasons” as you can.

Well, if we’re talking about why the last twenty years is missing, it’s because my husband died and I talk a good game but I still haven’t completely found my footing yet, on this new ground I’m walking.

If we’re talking about why romance is missing, I’m a hot fucking mess, and nobody deserves to be saddled with that until I can (see above) find my footing.

If we’re talking about why my attention span and concentration ability are missing, I’m going to (as I’ve talked about on other blog posts) point the finger towards Trauma Brain on that one. When my dad died, I couldn’t finish reading a book for almost two years. So I was expecting that when Tim died. I’m trying to supplement my need for input with podcasts, and audio books, and not come down too hard on myself for not physically reading. Even though I have read… I don’t know, three books in the last year? Four? Which is three or four more than I would have thought it would be. And that’s not counting audio books, of which I’ve listened to maybe about ten in the last year.

Can you think of one small step you could take toward finding/getting this thing that is missing?

Uh… heal? That’s just going to take time. I’m already heading in the right direction, it’s just going to take time and patience and softness with myself.