This I posted on Jeff Foster's "You Are Not Alone" Facebook group but I deleted it before it was approved by the administrator. But then I reposted it. And deleted it again since it never got approved. --- Why? I don't know.

This is hard to write because I don’t know where to start. I also don’t know where I want to end up, so it’s even more difficult. This group seemed like the right place because I feel like I’m alone, and maybe, I’m not sure, maybe I don’t want to feel that way anymore. I’ve spent a lifetime configuring my situation to be this way, I should be having a blast, enjoying the perfect isolation out here in my hermitage. But I’m not. I don’t feel so OK with myself anymore. I tried to post this the other day, but the approval process took a while, and I chickened out and deleted it.

I guess I should say that I’m a recent widower. My wife, Sharon, passed away in March of this year after a 10 year battle with MS. She was bedridden for the last 8 of those years, and I was her sole caregiver. I spent those years working and taking care of her until I couldn’t do both any longer. I watched her go from vibrant and full of life to taking her last few breaths, panting and barely clinging to life, and finally…well, I don’t know. She’s not here anymore.

I miss her more than I ever knew I would be capable of. During all those years of caregiving and watching her slow, tedious decline, I was a miserable human being. I had anger and frustration with how our lives had turned out, which only made her already tragic situation even more so. Sure, I was a devoted caregiver, but I treated her like a job which I couldn’t stand. I must lack the empathy gene. I just felt so much selfish anger the whole time.

When she finally took her last breath and was released from the prison of her body (if one looks at it that way) my anger left me, to be replaced by sadness. Sadness that I would never see her again. That she was really gone. And all that I have of her is the multitude of memories and the house filled with things that we had collected over the years. Even the food in the cupboard and freezer still has the potential to evoke more sadness. I don’t run away from the sadness, like a junkie I seek it. If I don’t get my fix, I feel nothing, which is far worse.

There may have been a brief time of numbness as I had to process the new reality I would be living in. You see, my whole identity was wrapped up in this “suffering saint/hero with a tragic flaw” role. But now I was free from my servitude, too. But I wasn’t, really. I still am not free.

Now I spend every day, all the long hours from the time I wake up to the time I can finally get to sleep, in a wretched state of either guilty sorrow or emptiness. I distract myself with hours of TV shows, housekeeping and a minimal routine of exercise and small tasks to get me through until the next day. I don’t interact with people because I am in such a negative frame of mind that I don’t want to infect any more of my family or friends with my dark cloud. I have a toxic effect on people after they have spent any amount of time around me. I feel I’m beyond their help, anyone’s help.

I think of the tragedy that was Sharon’s life, how I made it worse and couldn’t rise above my petty, selfish emotions to be a better person for her. That I didn’t appreciate her as a human being until she was gone. Who thinks about her now? Only me. She spent her bedridden years as I am doing, in isolation and distraction and rarely allowed anyone to visit her or call. She didn’t want to be remembered in her condition. It was a long, lonely time for her with only me and the cats and occasional nurse’s visits.

I left the safety of religion years ago, only revisiting it in the last few years in an attempt to make sense of the sorrows and seeming unfairness of life. I settled on a non-dualistic hodgepodge of spiritual teachings that made me, if anything, less spiritual and more of a nihilist or existentialist cretin than I ever was. Sometimes life seems so meaningless, other times it screams at me, but I’m just not getting it. I can get so sentimental over a picture or a song, but I can’t muster up anything for the plight of anyone else?

I guess I feel a kinship with animals. They seem so innocent to me, undeserving of anything bad to befall them. I talk to them whenever I see them, be they cows, dogs, cats, guinea hens, frogs or lizards. They are all my friends.

Like I said, I don’t know where this is going, as I don’t know where I am going. I think about death all the time. The image of my dying wife is burned in my mind. I know that I will die too. My body is giving me many not so subtle reminders. Where will I go? Who will think of me when I’m gone? Will I continue to exist as an individual consciousness somewhere? Or will I just become dust? All that non-duality stuff leaves my head swimming. I don’t have a clue as to who I am or what this life is. And my human experience is not one that I’m enjoying too much these days.

Sorry for this, I just had to get it out. I will go back to my isolation and distraction and not bother anyone. Thanks for reading this if you did. May your experience be a better one.