Hidden

The older I get, the more I realize:

Peace is my most valuable asset. My energy is my responsibility. Slow progress is still progress. These things I hold dearly. So, having to possibly disrupt or sacrafice them at this stage of my life to find more income, is weighing on him. 

Also, I haven't had to actively search for a job in quite awhile as I have spent the last decade volunteering and making a living doing services for people I know or through word of mouth.

I also haven't had to understand until lately how much more difficult it is being 54 and not 34 looking for employment. 

10 applications - nine of them ignored and one very quick "sorry, but, you are not qualified." Hello? Excuse me, but, yes, I am. Qualifications that span over my lifetime kind of qualified, actually, that you quickly dismissed without explanation.  How rude. 

But, beyond all that, there has been a deepening of hard emotions building inside me. A heart palpitation here, an unprompted sadness there, another uncontrollable cry, and this increasingly ignored distraction.....sitting in me.....surfacing.....commanding my attention. My father's anniversary of the day he died is this week. 

There is this part of grief that I have never really heard anyone talk about maybe because it is more felt than named. When a loved one dies, there is a piece of you that is not just broken, but shattered, making it impossible to repair. 

That piece of you is what the other person brought out in you. ONLY that person brought it out in you. Sides of you that only they got to see and you got to feel. A softness in their voice and the right words you always needed to hear. A feeling of being lighter, happier, braver, and safer when they were near. 

And when they are gone, that piece of you leaves with them and never returns. 

I don't just miss him. I miss who I was with him. So, in a sense, I am also mourning myself on his anniversaries. It is a hidden and heavy grief to carry when you know it was everything to you and now it all gone, that person and that version of you. 

I've spent years trying to honor that version of myself by living with more intention, saying the words others may need to hear, being supportive and kind and encouraging as he was to me. But, man, that void of not getting it back the same way, well it hurts. 

I am grateful for the years I had it and the wonderful traits he naturally brought out in me. Because of him, I know who I am and what I am capable of. That is the gift that softens the hurt.