Stage 18: Falling

Year 3, Day 7: Jameson Vintage, neat

This time of year is a tricky one. For no greater reason than convenience, we place importance on tying remembrances of events to the arbitrary act of the earth travelling around the sun another time. Should grief be heavier for a week every 365 days? Should the burden be greater when the calendar hits August 3rd again, even if this August has little to do with the ones before it? I suppose it happens this way because sadness needs an outlet and annually is the easiest way to ensure it has its out.

This timing is never easy, but this year has seemed to be a convergence zone. Throughout my life, I've gone through cycles of depression. When they happen, it's hard to see the forest for the trees: I can't really see I'm in one until I'm almost to a meadow. Of course, once you're out, you start to recognize the path that got you there, and this one had so many causes: a close relative of mine has been diagnosed with cancer, a dating schedule that, while absolutely worth it, has not left time for self-care, and for reasons that are still unclear to me, I've been exiled from the life of one of my best friends.  All of these have been important aspects of the last few months, and each of them is worthy of its own blog post, but the reason the depression hit its nadir was by far the most bizarre: I've fallen in love.

Ann and I have been seeing each other for about three months now. Neither of us entered into this arrangement looking for love. We both were recently heartbroken and looking for something simple, but we ended up gambling our hearts without intending.

Ann was easy to fall in love with. I could go on about her beautiful eyes or her gorgeous smile, but what draws me to her most is her absolutely remarkable emotional intelligence. She certainly understands my new bisexual identity and is helping me explore it, but she also understands my needs as a widower, sometimes better than I do myself. She's bright and caring and witty and energetic. She had my heart before I knew what was going on, and falling in love without knowing it can be a scary thing for a widower.

About a month ago, we went to the wedding on the shores of Guemes Island for an old friend of Dahlia's and mine. He lived with Dahlia and I several years ago and help us renovate our house. He had known Dahlia since high school and she deeply admired his mother, who would also be in attendance. During the ceremony, we had a moment of silence for the departed loved ones. Dahlia's name punctuated a list of grandfathers and great aunts.

We danced the night away and basked in the support of old friends. Many of them mentioned to me about how happy I looked, or to Ann about how happy she made me. We drank summer punch, smoked weed and caught up with long lost acquaintances. We danced to old Motown hits and new pop anthems. We danced caught up in the torrent of lust and alcohol and the budding love of a new romance. Then a song came on that hit me hard, a song I had requested when I sent in my invitation.

It was Dahlia's and my wedding song. I danced it with Dahlia's best friend, up from Arizona. We both failed to keep it together by the end of the first verse. By the end of the four minute song, there wasn't a dry eye among those who knew Dahlia. When the song ended, we all embraced, finding community in our sorrow. I went back to the table to see Ann, my eyes red from the tears and earlier pot smoke. She saw me at my most vulnerable and returned my gaze with one of admiration. It's something I didn't fully recognize at the time, but we were falling in love.

I was completely overwhelmed. During and after the song, I could feel Dahlia's presence. Not in any spiritual sense, but her memories were very forward in my mind. I thought about all the people at the wedding who cared for her and what they must think of me lustfully dancing with another woman. The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced of my own wrongdoing. I was flaunting my desire in front of a group of mourners.

I kissed Ann and apologized as I left the wedding to sit on the beach and clear my head. I thought long and hard about what Dahlia would think of all this. As I returned to the wedding, I dismissed my relationship with Ann as harmless pleasure seeking. That it was a brief phase of hedonism that the wedding-goers may not be able to understand, Dahlia most certainly would. What I didn't recognize was clear to everyone else at the wedding, I was falling in love with Ann.

It took me another month to say the words to her, and by that time the anniversary of Dahlia's death was nearing. I think there's always a fear in saying "I love you," but for a widower there's something more; there's the fear of moving on. I never fell out of love with Dahlia, so falling in love with Ann has required holding two conflicting desires in my heart.  As soon as I told her I loved her, I burst into tears. I cried for the fear. I cried for the lifted weight. I cried for the deep, strong desire for Dahlia to be there in her stead. I cried and she didn't shy away. She leaned into it and I only loved her more.

It’s taken me some time to realize that my love for Ann isn't a conflict. I can love her for different reasons than the ones that drew me to Dahlia. Falling in love again doesn't have to be about moving on or finding closure. If anything, Ann is precious to me precisely because Dahlia died. She respects my need for distance at times. She wants to help me explore my new queer identity. She opens herself up to me in a way Dahlia rarely did. This whole thing, perhaps, is not an exercise in replacement, but rather one of creation.

Stage 17: Currents

Day 725: Mai Tai: Light Rum, Amaretto, Pineapple and Orange Juices, Dark Rum Float

I am a child born of water. From the day I was brought into this world, I have not lived more than 30 miles from a major body of water. It has defined me. Regardless of where I go, the chopping water and endless horizon of blue remind me of home. It centers me and travelling to Maui, 2500 miles from the Puget Sound, was no exception. As I floated in the
Pacific, the waves pushing against me, I resolved to let them take me wherever they would.

Loss, among the pain, anger and aimlessness, is a learning experience. One of the more prevalent lessons has been that all things in life are dynamic. The ability to embrace change is a necessary skill for the widower and one of the hardest one to learn.

I've tried dating now for over a year. Each little bit of it has had its own failures, though rarely the ones I expected. Each of them has had a core of an inability to stand still. I spent 14 years mostly in the same relationship, I don't want to enter another until I've tired of being single, until I've explored the joys and heartache of not being paired.

For the past year, it's meant dating multiple women, but not really willing to commit to monogamy with any of them. It's not that any of them were undeserving or that I couldn't see myself in a relationship with them, I just wasn't ready for that type of thing. Just as things would get close with someone, the waves would push me away.

It took me quite a bit of time to recognize the pattern and the reasons for it. Dahlia was my anchor. Without her, I am ungrounded. I am incapable of being stationary. After too many tears and break-ups, I'm starting learning to embrace it. I'm learning to like where the waves take me.

It's taught me to reject the ideas of the past. It's led me to two very different, but somehow interconnected ideas. The first was that traditional ideas of romance and gender are not for me. For most of my adult life, I've been attracted to all sorts of people, but it's not something I've pursued since Dahlia and I were in love. Nothing else mattered.

It's easy enough to be closeted as a bisexual man when you’re married to a woman. The state of denial can even reach internally. Thoughts and desires which arose in college or on a drunken escapade with friends are dismissed with little fanfare due to cultural ideas of fidelity, homophobia and bisexual erasure. Despite mentions of male attraction to Dahlia over the years, it took almost a year of dating women before I was comfortable enough to admit to myself that it was the person, not the gender, I was attracted to. It took me another four months to get over my own anxieties before I started actually seeing men romantically.

Realizing the at same time that this need to explore needed to come with lower risk of hurting those I cared about, I decided to learn more about polyamory. Despite being explicit about my inability to commit to a relationship with those I've dated, I've realized that information has come after there's been emotional investment by both parties. It's one thing to say it on the fourth date, it's another to say it before the first. It's caused me to adopt the term polyamorous, though I'm not sure it’s quite appropriate, but commitmentphobic doesn't have the same ring to it.

Right before I left for Maui, I made plans to see a woman seemed perfect for these new revelations. Ann is queer, polyamorous and very charming woman when it comes to convincing others to join those particular groups. Plus she's from Michigan, so at the very least, I could get a good game of Euchre out of meeting her.

So there I floated in the welcoming waters of the Pacific, I resolved that all that all that kept me still would be washed away. While I don't feel cleansed, the last three months have been revelatory. I'm just trying to figure out what those revelations mean.

Stage 16: Sex and the Modern Urban Widower, Part 1

Day 576: Negroni: Gin, Campari, Sweet Vermouth, Orange Twist

Sex is a dangerous topic for anyone. The remnants of a Victorian society have kept discussion of it out of polite company for generations. It's made it so the simplest of discussions of desires are delayed and built up to such a degree that relationships are destroyed rather than be honest with a partner about what we need in the bedroom. It's probably the first topic I wanted to talk about in this blog, and yet it has taken 18 months to actually broach the subject.

No one knows this better than cancer patients and their partners. The disease and the treatments given can affect every single physical function of a survivor and the realm of sex is no exception. The chemo and a deteriorating body took its toll on Dahlia. Our lovemaking was always deliberate by the necessities of how our bodies operated together, but as the disease progressed, even taking things slow didn't help. By the end, several months would pass between intimate moments.

Of course, on top of all the physical ailments came emotional issues from the thousands of intricacies of living with cancer. All of these failures in the bedroom led to frustration and remained a contributing factor to my depression. For me, at least, a waning desire to have sex didn't come with worries about the state of our relationship. For Dahlia, who had seen cancer tear apart relationships, had a worry in the back of her mind that I would leave. I laughed off the idea when she brought it up. I still think it was a ridiculous notion, but I get where it came from. Cancer can destroy weaker relationships, but I meant my vows when I said them and I still did the day she died.

After she died, I found her Kindle and started looking through it. I was just looking for something to read, not expecting to find some insight into my recently deceased wife. Nevertheless, while I was flipping through her collection of books, I found a title called "The Sex-Starved Wife." It honestly shouldn't have been a surprise. When Dahlia saw a problem, she read up on it and attempted to find a solution. It was one of her most endearing characteristics. That said, it's a little different when you find out you're part of the problem she was trying to solve.

Of course, I knew that there were several extenuating circumstances to my fading libido, but it's hard for me to not think of myself as personally responsible. I could have tried harder. We could have tried different things. I suppose we did, but every failure, everything that caused Dahlia pain instead of pleasure, was a setback that pushed me subconsciously further away.

I'm not trying to absolve John Edwards or anything, but sometimes I wonder if opening up the relationship in these cases would make things easier or harder. For the survivor, it might remove some of the pressure of trying to please their partner, but it could be yet another reminder of your own mortality and cause even more worry about your partner leaving you. Maybe all that jealousy and guilt is inevitable, so perhaps things could have been easier for Dahlia and I. I don't really know.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't think about it as her condition deteriorated. It's human nature to think about the future for anyone. As much as the Buddhists would like to say otherwise, it's not really natural to just stay in the present. For a partner of someone with a terminal illness, this means thinking about what you want out of the next partner. Despite all of the remorse and the pain associated with doing so, I couldn't avoid looking at other potential mates out at the bar and on my bus ride into work.

My wandering eyes didn't go unnoticed either. Women starting approaching me in ways that either didn't happen or I didn't notice in the past decade. When they did, I nervously fumbled over my words and dismissed them in the politest ways I could think of. After one of these encounters, the usual cardinal sins would flood my mind: lust, pride, envy and all the mental self-flagellation associated with them.

A couple days after she died, I was filled with emotions: loneliness, relief, survivor's guilt, anger, etc. It was difficult to separate one emotion from another or to recognize the reasons for them. On the Friday following Dahlia's passing, I had friends over for our usual game night.  It was an amazing and emotional night, lots of hugs and reminiscing and support. It ended up being a lot of close friends and a few less frequent mourners. It was a strange night. Around midnight, the sky opened up and we had the rare Northwest thunderstorm.

I'm not a religious or spiritual person, but a powerful rainstorm is as close as I get to a metaphysical experience. Standing out in the warm summer rain provides me with a simple calm, a euphoric state in which I can let go of my anxieties and let the water wash away any sins, real or perceived. And petrichor, it seems, is a powerful aphrodisiac. It was in this storm that I first felt a deep and powerful longing for another human being that was not Dahlia.

He was a beautiful human being who had often been the target of my aforementioned drifting gaze. To be fair, I probably wasn't the only one with a crush on him. He stood squarely in the gap between genders in such a way that attracted the attention of all sorts of orientations. That night, with a million emotions running through my head and all my defenses washed away in the storm, I needed his touch in a way I was completely unprepared for six days after losing my wife.

Looking back on that night, I wasn't being very subtle about my affections, and he knew it. If I had been single for longer, I would have recognized his reciprocations. He returned the furtive glances. He sat next to me so bare skin touched. It drove me crazy. In another time, I would have been bolder. Instead, every touch of his made me more shameful about my feelings.  Six months later, things would have been clearer, but then, there wasn't a way to separate remorse from lust, an absence of contact from desire for an individual. The night left me with a confusion that I'm still trying to figure out.

After talking with several friends, I decided to discuss the matter with the object of my affection. Nervously, I invited him out for a drink. We talked and joked. I suppose I did some amount of flirting, though I'm not sure I could have recognized it as such at the time. After some time, I told him that I was attracted to him and completely unsure what to do about the situation.

He responded politely. He said he was attracted to me, but wasn't ready for another sexual partner. I'm not sure how much was truthful and how much was polite, but I'm not sure how much it mattered. To be honest, I wasn't ready. If anything happened between us, it would have ended in a panic attack and tears, mostly mine.

I've learned a lot since then, and the tears and panic attacks weren't really avoided, just reduced and delayed. I'm still trying to figure out how to be intimate again, both emotionally and physically. It's been a long journey and I have a feeling it's just beginning.