Time to write again (08/20/09)

A by Gazelle

i miss jesse. there are times, like this last week, when i miss him acutely. "acutely: characterized by sharpness or severity; felt, perceived, or experienced intensely." i sit there and wish he was there with me. because then things would be different.

i wouldn't be sitting at a computer at 10:20pm, drinking a cup of coffee, feeling like this. i wouldn't be thinking about a few hours ago, explaining one more time how my husband died the day before we moved into our home and yes, it's just me and my son, and yes it's hard but we're doing alright, and yes, thank you i am doing alright, and yes thank you i appear to be handling it very well, and yes goodnight thank you for your sympathies/prayers/condole

nces a year and a half later. and i wouldn't be thinking about how "different" i am, how "strong" i appear to be, how "well" i've handled the whole "situation". because if he was here there would be no "situation". there would be no sympathetic gazes. there would be no teachers telling me they heard about our "situation" and they'll watch for any signs from jace. and i wouldn't have to explain to them what a strong little man he's been and how well he's handled our "situation", that we're handling the whole "situation" very well thank you.

and i wouldn't have to leave my comfort zone. because that's what i had with him. a nice, cozy comfort zone where everyone trusted each other, and we listened to each other when it was needed, and we talked when we needed to, and we had our routines that were there every day. when everything outside of us changed it was ok because we didn't.

so that's what goes through my head now and then. and then i think about where i've come in the last year and a half. i think about the changes that i've made as a result of the "situation". and i think i've learned that a comfort zone is only okay if it grows. before i say anymore though i want to make it clear that i loved my husband unconditionally and when i say i miss him and wish he was here with me, i mean that.

that said our comfort zone with each other had reached the stage where i think a lot of couples find themselves in. a stagnant comfort zone where the boundaries don't expand. the thing with that situation is that people change and grow all the time and if you're comfort zone doesn't grow with it then problems start occurring, crowding happens, and all of a sudden your comfort zone isn't so nice and warm and cozy anymore. you start to wonder why it is that your comfort zone has to include stinky feet and chewing with your mouth open at dinner and curling irons left on the edge of the sink and blankets stolen in the middle of the night. you start to focus on the annoying details that you once shrugged your shoulders and laughed at. you stop having those spontaneous moments.

i think that at that point, the point where we were at, we had some choices to make. we could break our routine and push the boundaries of our comfort zone and create a new, expanded zone. and we would find new places to go, have new experiences, and continue to grow the way people are meant to grow. or we could ignore the symptoms, try to make things work in our now old and crowded zone (kinda like trying to fit a 3 bedroom house into a studio apartment lol), and eventually explode out of that zone in a way where there was no way to pick up the pieces.

i would hope that we would have been in the first category, expanded the zone, had some adventures, and grown healthy, old, and happy together. i hate that we didn't get to figure that out. i hate that i can see all of this in hindsight. hindsight is great when you can learn from it and i'm trying to, but its not fair that he didn't get the chance to.

i guess what i'm trying to say is that i miss my jesse scudder. i don't want to let that loss turn into anything negative though. i want to learn from him and take all the best of who he was and what we had and move forward. i'm still trying to sort through all of what that was but the biggest part i've learned so far is that you keep moving forward. maybe not in a straight path. my path so far has been ridiculously tangled. but you don't stop. and if you're with someone you should take the time to check out your own comfort zone. people are meant to grow. love is meant to grow. it's not something that you catch a little bit of, bottle up, and take out for special occasions. it's something that you live every moment with, learn from, experience, and hopefully share. you take your routines, throw them out the door every once in awhile, and tp the neighbors house in the middle of the night lol :) or your ambush your kids with the garden hose LOL :) or you just spend an entire night awake watching shooting stars. whatever makes your boat sail, forget floating.