The story of the abyss

It has been more than four months since I posted here. Me. The talky, chatty, tell-everyone-everything person.

TL;DR: I'm fine. Now. But I spent quite a bit of time in the Pit of Despair, emotionally, as well as in a funk physically. And it has taken an additional amount of time to find the energy to tell you about it.

So now, the full story.

Sometime not too long after the one-year anniversary, I just stopped being ... me. No gratitude. No strength. No resilience. Crying just walking from the couch to the kitchen, which is all of about 20 feet. One day it just dawned on me: I am alone.

Vic and I hit a rough patch about seven years into our marriage. It wasn't a seven-year itch—no one was looking to stray—it was just ... I was on a path of self-discovery and he already knew who he was. It was when I was in college, so in addition to pulling away emotionally, I was also pulled away physically while I spent all my evenings and weekends studying. One Valentine's Day—because this is the day you want to say sad things to your wife—Vic gave me a card that said he had often been alone, but this was the first time he had felt truly lonely.

Talk about a dagger in the heart! And yet ... it still took a couple of years before we were back to that nauseatingly in-love couple that we had been at the start. And once we got back to that couple, we stayed that way for the rest of his life. Whew!

I only tell this story because where I am now is just the opposite—I am not lonely, but I am alone.

I have just enough social interaction to make me feel loved (any more would push me out of my “extroverted introvert” comfort zone). If I want to take a walk with someone, have lunch with someone, go to the yarn store, I have a Rolodex of people to call. (Youngsters: a Rolodex is a round thing with paper in it on which you write addresses and phone numbers.) If I feel the least bit lonely, someone will be here in an instant.

But in the end, I am still alone (as we all are, really). And feeling that absence—instead of not feeling the presence, which is a very different thing, at least for me—started me down a heartrending path.

Combine that with hot sleeping.

I am in menopause. It's not something that gets talked about, as if there's something to be ashamed of, but I'm not, so we're talking about it. My menopause has not been horrible—think minor, infrequent hot flashes; minimal mood swings; other things I won't mention because men read this blog—but in September, I started “hot sleeping,” which is a thing. Look it up. I was so hot that I couldn't be under the covers, but if I took off the covers, I would be freezing because my skin was so hot that the cooler air felt even colder. Many nights, I didn't get into a deep sleep until 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning but still had to get up at 8 a.m. to “go” to work. (I still work at home almost all of the time.)

Combine that with COVID. You may remember that I had COVID in June. I recovered, but still had a cough some days, a headache other days, the sniffles, breathlessness—just symptom after symptom day after day.

Combine that with my lump. (Remember what I said at the top: I am fine.) One day in October, I found a lump on my neck. Although I wasn't smart enough to go to the doctor for any of the previous symptoms, I was smart enough to get that lump checked out. “Probably just a thyroid nodule,” my nurse-practitioner said. “Nothing to worry about.” She recommended an ultrasound and took my blood to check my thyroid levels.

Boy, howdy, was my thyroid out of whack! I immediately stopped taking my thyroid medication—which I was taking to increase my thyroid activity. Thyroid medication takes a ridiculously time to rid itself in your system, so I didn't even start to feel relief for almost a week. But finally, some of my symptoms started to abate. Less hot sleeping. My heart rate—which had been racing whenever I exerted myself at all—went back to normal. My headaches stopped.

But then there was the ultrasound, which I went to alone. The first time I went to a procedure that might find something real wrong with me without Vic since I was in my early 20s. My sister would have gone with me, as well as a number of friends, but I opted to go by myself. Why? Because I cannot guarantee that someone will always be available to go with me somewhere, so I need to be able to do things alone. It actually gave me strength to do it—albeit only a tiny bit, since I was by that time firmly in the abyss.

They found not just one nodule but four—FOUR! The one I could feel and three others. The three smaller ones were unconcerning to the doctor, but the fourth one was just big enough to give him pause. He said I could just monitor it, or I could get a “fine needle aspiration.” I've had cysts drained before—it is painful, but not excruciating. I'm sure I don't have to mention that Vic was always with me. Anyway, I thought I could survive a fine needle aspiration by myself, until I realized that they weren't draining the nodule—they were doing a biopsy and checking for cancer. (Remember: I am fine. I do not have cancer. This story has a happy ending.)

Obviously, I opted for the FNA. Here again, I decided to go by myself. I called to schedule the appointment, and I couldn't get in for more than a month. A MONTH! Like I'm supposed to let cancer cells grow in my body for a month???

And this is where I hit bottom.

I wailed. You might even say keening, if you were melodramatic, which we all know I am not.

OK, I was keening!

So much so that Bella came over to me. Bella is not the intuitive dog who comes over and puts her head on your lap when she senses you need her. But I knew I must be in bad shape if she was coming over to me. She bumped my head with hers (because I had my head in my hands and it was at just the right doggie height)—and then she turned around, as if to say, “Would it make you feel better if you scratched me on the butt?” It was almost enough to stop the keening, but not quite.

After about 20 minutes of keening (no lie), I Slacked my boss. (It's like texting, but with Slack.) At this point, I should mention that only three people know about any of this—my boss, because I always want him to know what is going on; my sister, because she is my sister; and my friend who walks Bella with me, because we get into a lot of stuff on those walks. I had told some people bits and pieces—I haven't been feeling well, I have been hot sleeping, I have been sadder—but only three knew everything.

Anyway, I told my boss that I had scheduled the biopsy but it was a month away, and I said, “Just for that moment, when I thought I could have cancer growing inside me for a month and NO ONE WAS HERE TO GIVE ME A HUG, I had a total meltdown. Why did he have to die, Andy? Whyyyyyyy?”

I have never asked that question. I know why—he was 75 years old and he had a bad heart and he had a bunch of cancers that ruined his body. But from the abyss, nothing makes sense.

And this was when I felt most alone. Even though I had some support (the three whole people I told), I did not have the support of the one person I most wanted it from. The person who probably would have told me to go to the doctor long before I did. The person who probably would have helped me remember all my symptoms when I went to have the lump checked out. The person who would have said, “You know, I had lots of diagnostic tests that were scheduled far into the future—but you were able to get them moved up for me. Let's see if we can do that. But in the meantime, here's a hug.” HERE'S A FUCKING HUG. I don't think it's asking for too much to just have my person here with me when I need him.

But then I turned off my emotional brain and turned on my logical brain—one of Vic's favorite things about me. One of the options from the ultrasound was to just watch it, so waiting a month shouldn't be a big deal. But I also called my nurse-practioner to see if I could get a referral to another hospital—just to see if I could get in earlier. She gave me one, and lo, I was able to schedule a biopsy three weeks earlier. I went alone, again, to build character. I only cried a little. And the results came back benign.

So here's what happened after the biopsy.

• I started to open up a little more. Told more people more of the story. Honestly, I'm not sure why I didn't do that to begin with. I always turn outward when something is going on. I overshare. I wear my heart on my sleeve. I don't keep secrets. But this time I turned inward. I don't know why—my friends and family lift me up. I am buoyed when people are inspired by my strength and resilience. I don't want people to pity me. I don't want people to see my struggles (at least not without the happy ending—yes, I'm sad, but ...). And I don't want people to get tired of me. (OMG, when is she going to get over this? It's been a year! We all have problems!) But when Andy asked me, “When you think about those who you've been able to lean on, who comes to mind?” I childishly answered, “I don't want to lean on anyone else anymore. I want to lean on Vic. I'm tired of not having him here.” So opening up helped me find my way out of the abyss.
  
• The dread wore off. I'm not sure I was even conscious of it, but when I got the results, I instantly felt lighter and started to find my way out of the abyss.
  
• At the same time, my thyroid medication had gotten almost completely out of my system, so I was feeling better physically. We always said we were great—when things were going well. When one little thing goes wrong, we lose it. In the days before GPS, we drove to Jacksonville. I had mapped out our route, made hotel reservations along the way, printed out directions for each leg. We were ready. But we left after work on a Friday and arrived at our first destination in the dark. I didn't see the street sign where we were supposed to turn until ... after we passed it. Vic said something snappish. Instead of stopping and immediately turning around, he went around a block—but didn't end up on the street where we were supposed to be. I said something snappish. We snappishly found our way to our hotel, snappishly checked in and snappishly went to our room, where we snappishly went to sleep. Vic only ever needed to sleep on an argument for it to get better, so only I snappishly awoke. But then we got back on the road and everything was OK. So this hiccup of not feeling well just made me snappish, and when I started feeling better, I started to find my way out of the abyss.
• I heard a song that gutted me—but also helped me. I am a fan of Taylor Swift, although I came late to the party, so I was able to buy two of her albums that she re-recorded after a dust-up with her former record label. One of these albums featured a song that did not appear on the original (OK, both albums have songs that did not appear on the original, but I'm just talking about one in particular) called “Ronan.” The first line that I really heard was “You were my best four years.” With Taylor, that could be about an old boyfriend, although if you read or watch virtually anything, you know that Taylor absolutely can't keep a boyfriend that long. (🙄 She would say haters gonna hate, but I say they're just a--holes.) I didn't really pay attention to the rest of it (I was walking Bella, so not focusing on the music), but I was kind of curious about it, so I Googled it when I got home, and that's when I found out that Ronan was a little boy who got cancer when he was three years old and died less than a year later, just before he would have turned four. Taylor found the blog of his mom, Maya Thompson, and wrote the lyrics based on words she read on Maya's blog. (Maya is listed as a cowriter of the song.) Although the song was about a little boy, there were pieces of it that just spoke to me—in my mind, I changed “four” to “for” (you were my best for years), and especially “What if the miracle was even getting one moment with you?” I listened to Taylor's beautiful, soulful song on repeat and watched this beautiful video for a week. I read Maya's blog. I marveled at her strength and her honesty and her vulnerability, and I started to find my way out of the abyss.
• I started reading again. First up, My Steve, by Terri Irwin. Vic was a huge fan of the Crocodile Hunter, and we had started watching Crikey! It's the Irwins. I marveled at Terri's resilience—her husband died when he was 44 and she was 42. She had an 8-year-old and a 2-year-old who depended on her. She couldn't crumble. And she made the most of a shitty situation. Reading about their love story nurtured my soul, as corny as that sounds. But here again, one particular line in this book really spoke to me. The night Steve died, as Terri lay in bed, she watched the clock. “Here is another minute I have survived without Steve.” This book was published just a year after Steve died, which means she had started working on it even earlier. We were in the same space-time continuum of widowhood. And this just really reminded me ... sometimes, we just have to take it one minute at a time. And this is the thing that literally pushed me out of the abyss.

So here we are, back to my “happy” ending—I'm healthy physically and emotionally. I even had a session with a grief counselor who said I didn't need a grief counselor. (Reminiscent of the psychologist who told Vic he didn't need a psychologist after his big tongue cancer even though I and many of his medical professionals pushed him to see her.) But I've also learned a lot of lessons: Grief doesn't end on your timetable. It's OK to be vulnerable. My friends and family will always be there for me when I need them and will never find me annoying—at least about this. My food peculiarities will continue to vex some. And they would all rather hear the truth if I need to speak it. I am not the only person who lost someone—draw strength from their experience. Go to the doctor. Take a list of symptoms so you don't forget them. Scratching Bella's butt does make you feel better.

Thank you to all who have stuck with me during this dark time and are still with me on the other side.

Here are a few of the pictures I took during this time that made me smile:

Bella also needs tummy tickles.

Shopping with my sister for her birthday.
Don't you think these fluffy Kate Spade bags are the bomb?

A pillow made for me by Vic's sister—
from his flannel shirts.

Ahhh, Bella found her sun in her favorite chair
with her favorite blanket on it.

The family together for Vic's sister's birthday!

A baby blanket I recently completed.

Ummmmm, all the yarn I bought this year.
Don't judge me. I'm grieving. 😂