Worry-Wart Widow

Sometimes my blog posts resemble more of a steady stream of consciousness than a coherent piece of writing. This blog post is something like that. I spent a lot of time thinking about COVID-19 and Bryan today. I wondered what he would have done in the middle of all this if he were still alive. He wouldn’t have been considered an essential employee so he wouldn’t have been working. He would have been stuck at home and anyone who knew Bryan knows that he would have been twitching.

From the time I knew he had cystic fibrosis, I’ve had a little worry wart hiding away in my psyche. This worry wart kept track of how much time we would probably have together because of the CF that would eventually take him away much too soon. I spent a little over three years with that little worry wart, bugging me in the back of my mind, and me not even fully conscious that it was there. It wasn’t until COVID-19 came about that I recognized that worry wart for what it was – a worry that I wouldn’t be able to live the full life I wanted to live because of something that was out of my control and could snatch it all away from me at any moment. This faceless, odorless, invisible THING can end my life and the life of others just as CF ended Bryan’s. Overall, Bryan did a pretty darn good job of living life despite that reality. Why couldn’t I? It took the whole day for me to realize why. COVID-19 isn’t even affecting me health-wise right now. I go to work, I come home. Yet I can feel the stress in my body. I spent all this time with the underlying stress of a disease taking away the things I love most. Now, a year after trying to heal from CF doing just that, here I am again, stressing about a disease taking away the things I love most. W.T. F. I can’t travel. I can’t go to concerts. I can’t enjoy all my friends. I can’t even just relax and enjoy the extra time reading, writing, and setting up my condo. I can’t continue to try and live the life Bryan would have wanted me to live. And that makes me angry. I just want to heal. I want to try to move forward. I want to enjoy the things that make me happy and this damn COVID-19 is getting in the way of all of that in so many ways. This is a total pity party rant. I have a ton of things to be grateful for, but tonight, it’s my small voice in a larger sea of voices crying out in the middle of this global pandemic for it all to be over with so we can go back to some semblance of our lives.