to date, or not to date. That is the fucked up question!

if I am ready for a big ass step. I want to start dating but I am terrified! if any widows have advice for me let me know. I am so tired of being alone, I need that support, that comfort, that affection. I got so used to it and I know it is soon and I am constantly going back and forth in my head about it but I really just love being in a relationship....I want to be married.....I want kids.....how does that happen if i don't start dating someday!? Why keep waiting, life is for the living, right? Why wait? (ok I know there are hella reasons why, but i really want to know the legit ones). HELP ME.

oldie but a goodie

if you didn't know KC, here is a little bit of the man that he was.
http://www.noozhawk.com/local_news/article/120610_santa_barbara_mourns_death_of_k.c._carlsen

How did I get myself into this?

So, today I am going to a wedding for my friend. Tough stuff, to be sure. I cried at her bridal shower in the bathroom while we were supposed to be laughing and playing silly games and laughing a bunch. I cried in my hotel room bed when we got back from the casino at the bachelorette party and everyone else had fallen asleep, and i couldn't because I was just so sad that i didn't get to be that bachelorette. Not only did I agree to attend the wedding, but I have signed on to do a bridesmaids hair, the maid of honor's make up, and the bride's make up before the big moment. This week I was thinking about it and feeling pretty proud of myself for not falling apart or really having too much anxiety at all. This morning it feels different. Like, really apparent that I have bit off more than i can chew. Now I am feeling a fuck ton of anxiety that I am going to mess this up for the bride, not because of some dark side of me that wants to sabotage anything, but because what if I can't keep it together and I leave the bride with one eye full of shadow and I pass out or something? I realize this is probably not going to happen and I am being overly dramatic but this is widow brain at it's finest, I suppose.
The funny thing? I have a date to the wedding. It is super casual and just a friend of mine, an old friend who I have known since grade school. He is a great friend to me, very sweet, likes to dance and party so he is a perfect wedding date. But it still feels really weird. Almost like a real date, I guess. yea, I guess this is what a date might feel like, only more weird. So maybe I should look at this as like a practice date. It's safe, because it's my friend. This could be a valuable experiment I suppose. It still kinda wigs me out a bit though. This is an event where KC should be by my side and I should be 100% happy, and not feeling anything remotely resembling things like dread, anxiety, jealousy, bitterness or anger. But here I am, Saturday morning healthy and ready to go to a wedding for two beautiful people who love each other and all i can muster is gentle sadness and a stomach ache.
Congrats to the bride and groom, I would like to go climb in a hole now.

The weight of it.

It is so crazy how after I met KC, I couldn't picture my life without him. For a long time after he passed away I felt like I was going through life without really living it, because how could I be living without KC here? It's kind of scary now that I am removed so far from my life with KC that it's hard to know what my life would be if he were still here. I guess we would just be coming home from Alaska, I would be trying on wedding dresses. We would be looking at houses to buy, somewhere in a good school district with a big enough yard to house a boat and still have room for a garden and a place for our kids to play. Instead of that, I am in my parents house, laying in bed without any motivation to get up and do anything. I justify this, "It's Sunday, there's football on, My neck hurts, I'm still getting over being sick." Truth? I am fucking sad. I miss KC. KC wouldn't have let me stay in bed til 11:30, we would be biking to Goleta pier, walking on the SB bluffs, fishing, "dippin through the hood," (what KC used to call taking a drive though town). I would have a life. Right now, in this moment, I don't feel like I have a life. I know I do, like, I'm breathing and shit like that, but what kind of life is this? I guess I do good things, my job and whatever. It feels good, sometimes. But I miss loving someone. I miss being loved. I feel like even though I have people who love me and know that I am still hurting, I have to hide what I am feeling. Understand, no one in my life wants me to feel this way, this is self-imposed. I don't want people that I love to know what I am feeling all the time. Like, literally, my mom just knocked on my door while I am writing this blog and I pretended I was crying. I know she could tell, but I am happy that she didn't ask me about it. I know that when I am sad, it makes the people who love me sad. I don't like to be responsible for the people that I love feeling sad. I hate that I have that affect on people. I used to make the people around me happy. I wish I could get back to that. Making people happy instead of sad.
Shoulds:
Get out of bed
Go to the gym
Call a friend to do something
Go outside
Walk my dog
Stop trying to hide things
Cook a healthy meal and enjoy it
Stop feeling sorry for myself
Meditate

Probably none of that is going to happen.
Is this what my life is going to be from now on? I am terrified of this. I am always ---fuck! Mom just came in again and she saw me crying. This time she talked to me and I know she knows I am sad, and now I know she is sad and that is my fault. fuck fuck fuck I hate that this is my life right now. fuck this

I am constantly reminded of what I almost had. Sometimes i just get mad about it when I probably shouldn't, but I just can't help it. I see my students getting so pissed and bent out of shape and I know they have disabilities and they can't help or regulate their emotions, but i still just wanna shake them sometimes and tell them to get the fuck over themselves, and that they have no idea what real shit is, and to quit being a baby because you don't get to go to recess today, I fucking lost my fiance!!! but alas, I can't. I don't get to shake students....oh well. "I'm in a fight about facebook and boys, my life isn't worth living!" Really, kid? Seriously? Fuck you. Talk to me when you have real problems...ya know...besides the autism and whatnot.

Maybe I am just feeling a little cranky. I am still not over being sick and that does nothing to help my grief. I was starting to feel hopeful there for a while and now i am on the downswing again, I guess. I'm starting to question a lot, like whether or not I am in the right job. Whether or not I am any good at it to begin with. Whether or not I should bother going back to school. Whether or not I should start looking for someone to date. Whether dating again would hurt or help. Whether or not I will be a good Aunty to my sister and brother-in-law's baby (how i will handle that in general, being that I am so incredibly jealous of my sister I can't even stand it). I wonder whether or not I am allowed to be happy for any sustainable period of time or i i have some crazy fucked up karma that is keeping me steadily spiraling into loneliness and despair. I wonder daily what the fuck I did to deserve this crippling pain and why some people seem to get everything they have ever wanted out of life, or even everything I have ever wanted. I know I sound like such a fucking baby right now but the fact is, I know nothing. I just wonder about everything and I want some mother fucking answers where there are none. All of these things, except for the dating stuff, are questions that KC would help me with. He always could put my mind at ease by either assuring me I was doing the right thing or pointing me in the right direction. Just another thing I miss about that man.



OK, enough down on yourself shit, meg O. Let's list some things you are super stoked about in your life:
Speaking about yourself in third person.
Family
Friends
Ponies
music
babies
puppies
I have a job
I got to learn what love is, how to love and how to receive love
I have a pretty accurate gauge of life shit
I know I can survive some "real shit"
My health
Mario Kart
Marijuana
Pizza
Candy
Comedy
Mazie poo poo girl


That's what I got for now...Time to watch some my little pony. Serious.

sick=sad

I am sick, maybe a flu? cold? not sure but it makes the sadness that much worse....pretty frustrating. I guess when you are sick and you feel gross it isn't conducive to feeling hopeful about life. oh well...gotta get better because I have a football game to attend tomorrow. Go niners, no matter what. Not thinking clearly enough at the moment to write a good blog post but just felt like checking in. Gotta get better, a bath, some yoga, a face mask and painting my nails. that will help. yea. and tea. and sleep. hope it works in the next 16 hours so i can go to the game, now i'm talkin in circles...get it together meg O
Here's to the healthy.

So, this fuckin sucks. I am a lot of things to a lot of different people. I am a daughter, a sister, a friend, a teacher, a cousin, an acquaintance. How does one really identify oneself? I feel like I am so many different things sometimes that I no longer really know how to relate to myself. It's kinda weird. I used to be a lot of things: a dancer, an artist, a student, a kid, a girlfriend and then a fiancee. I loved being the last two that I listed, I think I was really good at it. But what if i was only good at it because of KC? What if, because of how much KC loved me I just fell into this roll of "Meagan, the thoughtful, killer gf/fiancee who loves sitting and watching TV while my man snoozes and I fold his boxer-breifs." I like, loved that shit, legitimately. Who the fuck loves doing laundry, let alone for someone else? This me, that's who. I loved being out shopping for myself and finding more things that I wanted to get for him than for me...knowing how happy he would be to receive some silly little Led Zeppelin T Shirt or a 6 pack of Sam Adams. He was so easy to please because all he really wanted was me and he had me, fully. 
It makes me sad when I see people who are in relationships and they get jealous. I had little jealousies with KC at the beginning, but when I moved to Santa Barbara, I never worried about a thing with him. It's an interesting distinction between thinking something and knowing it. When you really KNOW something you don't have to question it. I KNEW that KC loved me and me alone. He would flirt with girls. I watched it. He flirted with my friends, my regulars at work, my bosses wife. But it was so genuinely sweet and funny that it never hurt me or made me question the relationship I was in, if anything it endeared him to me further because I knew what he was doing. He was making people feel good. Making them feel proud and happy about who they are and I just loved him for that. If you are reading this blog because you know me or you knew KC, you know this to be true because you have likely felt this from him before. He just had a way of making people feel so good about who they are and making people feel appreciated. Me, especially.
So here's the rub, the fucked up shit: what the fucking fuck am i supposed to do now? How can I ever, in a million years, expect to find someone that I love and loves me like this again??

I think I have asked this question before, but I haven't gotten an answer yet so I am still fuckin writing about it. The worst part? I want it so fucking badly it hurts. I see relationships everywhere and I am so deeply jealous sometimes I can't stand it. It hurts like daggers in my joints, keeping me from moving. I absolutely CRAVE the feelings KC gave me. The pride he felt for me. He used to tell me all the time how proud he was to be with me, that he was proud and it made him feel so good about himself that I would be with him. I never understood his feelings because I felt like i was the one who struck it big on the dumb luck that KC would want to be with me for a day, let alone his whole life. Maybe it is super selfish of me to feel like this, to think that I am deserving of this goodness not once in a lifetime, but twice, when some people don't get to have it at all. Maybe it is selfish, but I can't help it. He was like a drug to me. Now that I have had it, I need it again. I can't go back to Coors Light after the finest wine, I won't accept it. I won't settle. But when the finest wine is dried out, one is left only with the longing, a thirst that can't be quenched, a hunger that can't be satiated, a desire that cannot be fulfilled.
But......


Somehow, I have a little bit of hope. Only really because of my widows (the people I met at Camp Widow last month with whom I have somewhat kept  in contact). My widows have taught me that just as I never in a million years would have imagined I would find someone to love me as KC has loved me, there is the possibility to find love again as long as I am open to it. Life tends to be weird and fucked up and beautiful and scary and awesome. So maybe I will get another chance to fold up some chonies while a beautiful wonderful  dude snoozes to the left of me. Maybe I will get a chance to have a family of my own. It's the open mind thing that I have to stay focused on. Somehow, to reconcile mind and body and the differences they seem to share, I will have to open up and let myself love and be loved in a different way than it was with KC and make no comparisons where they are harmful instead of helpful. I know what values they (my future dude, should he be so kind as to exist and make his ass bloody well known, and KC) will have to share: liberal views on politics, the basic manners (be nice to people, goddamnit), loving the gays, loving all colors of peoples and respecting cultural differences, a zero tolerance for cheating, and the deep seeded desire to have a family. But these values can come in many forms, not in a KC-clone form....that would be too fuckin weird and I am totally opposed to the very thought of it. I don't want another KC, I just want to find someone who I can have a good relationship with who can make me laugh. But until I can consider this thought without crying or panicking or passing the fuck out, how do i deal with the overwhelming lack of affection in this life? I guess spooning my dog against her will will have to suffice. 

The Social Fake

I just got home from a bachelorette party for my friend. She is a great girl and her fiance is amazing, I love them both and am so happy for the two of them. We had such a great time out in South Lake Tahoe, Some of my closest friends were there. We got all dressed up and went out for a great dinner and dancing, it really was a blast. I really felt like it was so fun while I was in it, except for maybe a few moments where it was pretty tough on me. When we were out I was so grossed out by all the dudes that were around.... I just kept picturing like, National Geographic type footage where some jungle cat is stalking prey only their drunk and stupid, and not cunning and beautiful. It made me so deeply sad to know that people like this are taking over the world, it seems, and KC is gone. How is that fair, or just? Well, it isn't. It isn't fair and I am the one who is the worst off as a result.
KC used to make stupid ass dudes like that his friend, too. He could be friends with anyone, he found good in even those douchey guys in night clubs. He would make them laugh or impress them by knowing a stat about Kobe Bryant and the Lakers. He would talk shit to these fools and they would just love him for it, they became a little better for the interaction with KC. I just got reminded so profoundly of how much worse off the whole world is because of a stupid fucking accident that fucked up all of these lives and it makes me so god damned angry. Angry and sad.
But, in that moment, what am i supposed to do? I am in a dance club with a friend of mine who is having a once-in-a-lifetime experience dancing and drinking and laughing with her friends because she is about to married to a great human being. I don't wanna fuck it up for her, no debbie-downer for me. so I fake it. I dance more. I smile bigger. I hoot and I holler at the Bachelorette and I hope my make up isn't running and that no one can tell that I am crying because I am so desperately lonely. I know that the girls I was out with would be nothing but compassionate and concerned and sweet and accepting, but this night is not about me. This night is for her. So i faked it. I really did have fun, for most of the time. Like, a great time! But I just think that the rest of my life is going to be peppered with these moments of "Social Fake" to get me through, quietly, without being noticed. Without anyone having to care for me or even feel bad that I am feeling bad. I hate that I do that to people anyway...but I know it's an inevitability. Mostly because I have awesome friends who genuinely give a shit about me and my fucked up life circumstance, so for that I am grateful. It's a bit of a burden, though, to know that you can bring down other people's moods because of your mood, when you have no control over your mood. I guess that's why I fake it. gotta get a little better at it, though, if i am gonna be able to keep this up.