Pajama Day

 

        

This morning while on my way to take my dad to a doctor’s appointment, I waited at a stop light in front of the local high school. I remembered when my parents used to say, “Look both ways before you cross the street.” The automatons I watched cross the street didn’t even look UP, let alone look both ways. The pajama-clad teens had their noses stuck in their phones, oblivious to their peers walking next to them, to the fact they were crossing a rush-hour busy street. They somehow put out a feeler for the curb and stepped up, still not looking up from their screens. It was like watching robots that had been programmed to go from point A to point B and their GPS told them when to step over a curb and when to hang a right.

 I know I’m showing my age, but I would have been horrified to go to school in my pajama bottoms. The only time I wore pajamas to school was during spirit week on Pajama Day. Even then I didn’t wear my “real” PJs but something fun I’d get just for that day. The leopard print onesie, or the Winnie-the-Pooh onesie. I guess I was a onesie gal, at least when I had to wear PJs to school.

I’m showing my age again when I say that when I walked to class with friends, we’d be talking and giggling and slugging each other.

“Hey, did you get the homework done for Lemke’s class?”

“No, I’m screwed. Geometry sucks, it’s not even real math, and it’s wrecking my grade point.”

“You think Mark will be at school today?”

“I dunno. Probably not. He has senioritis bad.  He doesn’t know I’m alive anyway, so what does it matter?”

 In other words, we were interacting with other human beings, live and in person. It seems it’s becoming a lost art. I know it’s a lost art in my life. As a card-carrying introvert, I spend more than my fair share of time alone, choosing to stick my nose in my phone rather than lunching with a friend. ‘Course it doesn’t help that my sister lives 2300 miles away, and my closest friend lives 700 miles away. Not conducive to “Hey, let’s meet for lunch.” It also doesn’t help that I’ve developed a nice little case of social anxiety since losing my husband 18 months ago.

I don’t know if that is a normal side effect of grief. I’ve tried more than a few times to find some grief counseling to get some answers and every time I’m hit with a dead end. Phone calls not returned, ghosted by the “grief mentor” I was assigned through one organization, hospice that said, “Sorry, you moved out of state. We can’t help. Sucks to be you.” I’ve been left to my own devices…Googling “coping with loss” and “anxiety and grief”. It makes for an interesting Facebook feed after such searches. I must remember to use the private browser.

Being left to my own devices is nothing new. It seems if my life had a theme to this point, it certainly would be DIY. I can’t count the number of times people have asked if I’m an only child. “You give off the only child vibe” they’d say. I wasn’t. But I get why I have that vibe. Growing up with a brother on the autism spectrum, undiagnosed, tends to give you the only child vibe. True interactions were few and far between. I always had the expectation of my big brother protecting me, standing up for me, hell, knowing I was alive would have been great. My expectations only led to disappointment. I learned from a young age I was on my own.

The inevitable team projects in college were my nightmare. Just let me do it on my own. It’s faster, easier, it’ll be done right, and doesn’t require social skills. That became my motto when I ran my own business for 15 years. Help? No thanks, it’ll just cost me time and money. I got this. Every day was “take my dog to work day” and I didn’t have to ask her what music she wanted to listen to.

The only time in my adult life when I didn’t have to go it alone was in my marriage. I had my person who had my back. It took me a few years to get used to having someone I could count on, to adjust to not having to do everything myself. Then it became the norm. I had the strong and steady one, who helped make decisions, who carried the weight when I couldn’t, who picked me up when I fell.

            And then it was gone. As prepared as I thought I was to lose him, I was blindsided by how I’d feel losing everything else that went along with him. No longer feeling safe in this world was and is the worst. But missing the little things that defined our life together is what digs at me, like someone flicking my head when I least expect it. Being in the kitchen trying new recipes or making our old favorites. Nobody warned me food wasn’t going to taste the same without him. Going to comedy shows and laughing until we hurt. Nobody told me watching those same comics would now make me sad. Watching Jeopardy and shouting out stupid answers just to get the other to laugh. I try it now but my dogs don’t get my sense of humor. What nobody told me about is that yes, you’re going to lose your husband, but you’re also going to lose life as you know it. You get to figure out who you are again, who you are without him, who you are as a widowed person. You get to feel like you’re starting over, but at an age when it takes more energy than you have.

I’m starting to relate to the pajama-clad kids. Why get dressed when nobody cares if you do? Why look up from your phone when there’s nobody around to talk to? I guess I’ll stick my Introvert Club Card in my wallet and walk to the grocery store, early, before the rest of the town wakes up. I might even look both ways before I cross the street.