One thing has become abundantly clear to me. Every time I try to make grand plans for this blog, I inevitably fail to follow through. So I am forgetting all that stuff and returning this blog to its original intent. I am going to write about how I use music and art and food and creativity to cope with being disabled. I am doing this because while there are many things I am interested in, coping is going to be a constant, and it deserves its own blog.
That said…I have another blog for the other things in my life. I started JJBiener.com as a music blog to write about a project I was working on. That project, for reasons I will address there, is now really impossible, so I am going to use that site as a place to put all my various creative works so they are all available in one spot. I will post on JJBiener.com after I have made the necessary changes.
To get this blog back on track, I have to admit that while this is supposed to be about coping, I haven’t actually been coping very well at all. If you know me or have read this blog, you know that my wife passed away on October 11, 2015. That left a hole in my life unlike anything I’ve experienced before. While I have certainly experienced loss, none of them affected me in quite the same way. It is not about who I loved more, but rather what role they played in my life.
What I didn’t realize when my wife was alive is that every thought I had was in some way tied to her. Each thought was considered in the light of how it would affect me, and how it would affect her. When she passed away so suddenly, I was faced with having to completely restructure my thinking. This surprised me, because I hadn’t realized she had been so interwoven in my thoughts. It had occurred on a subconscious level that I wasn’t really aware of until it changed. Figuring out how to think in terms that didn’t include her was the hardest part of learning to live on my own.
When the anniversary of her passing came this year, her daughter and I spent the days together so we could help the other through. Once the day was past, we were both able to breath again. This isn’t to say that we have stopped grieving, because that will always be there because of the love that we felt for her. What it means is that we can each look forward again.
I can’t say what my life is going to be like from here. All I know is that I will have a life. I am still disabled. I still have all the illnesses I had before. But those are things I can deal with. I am still trying new things and meeting new people.
There are things I would still like to write about that have happened over the last year, but that will have to be for another time.
Live well.