70. The Extra Mile

"What is it like to lose your best friend, your soul mate, your everything? Your world just comes crashing down, you lose your life, you lose everything that ever mattered to you. My husband was only [insert age]. I am [insert age]. It took me [insert years] to find him, and I thought my life finally had meaning. My life finally had what I was searching my whole life for. We had a perfect life together that people only dreamed of. People would look at us and say how perfect we looked together. People used to say, when they thought of true love, they just pictured the relationship my husband and I had. People used to tell us that looking at us, they knew that true love soul mates really do exist. All they had to do was look at me and my husband. It was like we were a greeting card for Hallmark for true love soul mates. Our lives were complete. 

~I am Too Young to Be a Widow, LibertyBell (February 24th, 2009)

I think if one more person tells me I'll find love again, I will scream and throw a full-blown temper tantrum. I already had - and lost - the love of my life. He was my soul mate and my best friend. In short, my everything. And now he's gone. Forever. Why can't society just accept that sad reality, devastating though it may be, instead of telling me I'm "too young" to make the kind of life-altering decisions that others my age are fortunate enough to be making with their husband or wife by their side? I was also too young to become a widow, and yet here I am. The older I get, the more passionate I feel about advocating for the perspective that has come at the cost of losing what I love most.

After a particularly grueling and emotional day this past week, I woke up at 2:30 a.m. to the sound of something tapping on my window. My bedroom is on the third floor and there are no trees outside my window, nor was there a strong wind that night. My puppy heard it too - she jumped out of bed and started barking at the noise. It's times like these that I know Jon is still with me. And it's times like these that remind me of how impossible it is to open my heart when I'm still deeply in love with my husband. Enough with the "he would want you to be happy" stuff. Please - spare me. I've been dealing with all of this for five and a half years now. And yes, I know he'd want the very best for me. That's what happens when you love someone. He told me himself that if anything ever happened to him, he'd want me to continue to live my life to the fullest. But that's a lot easier said than done. He also didn't want to die. He wanted to experience a long life and rejoice in all the plans we'd made for the future. It's not so easy when you're the one who's left behind to live that life without your soul mate. It literally makes me sick to my stomach when people encourage me to "move on" and "find love again." I'm simply not ready, and I don't know if I ever will be. I tried going down that route and obviously it didn't work out so well. If anything, I felt I was somehow betraying my husband, even though I know that's technically impossible.  Like it or not, it's simply not something I want right now. Ironically, while the clock may be ticking on the one hand, society also tells me I'm also "so young" and have "so much life left to live" on the other. So I'm going to work on being happy just being me for a while. There's a big difference between being alone and being lonely because I miss my husband.

A few weeks ago I attended a conference in California to learn about entrepreneurial ventures from an inspiring - though somewhat eclectic - group of speakers. All were experts in their chosen fields. One man had created a renowned mentoring program and soccer league for refugee children in California. Another woman fled Afghanistan during the Soviet War and has since returned to her homeland to investigate the infamous opium trade. Members of the Occupy Wall Street movement discussed the challenges they've faced, while the author of the best-selling book What Color is Your Parachute? spoke about measures of success in hunting for jobs given the current state of the economy. All of these speakers came together in the redwood forest, high up in the mountains of Loma Mar, California, to encourage those of us in the audience who have faced personal adversity. Their words were powerful and reflected the wisdom and insight that can only come with knowing perseverance on an intimate level. As one speaker put it, "there is no traffic on the extra mile."

Before the daily slate of speakers got underway, I spent the early morning hours trekking through the forest on a long hike, and as I walked, I thought about the direction my own path has taken and how, lonely though it might be at times, it's worth every inch of the discomfort and sorrow because it's my path and no one can take it away from me. While everyone else might be doing what life has deemed right for them, I'm doing the extra mile because I believe that extra mile is worth all the blisters and sweat and tears of the work it takes to complete it.  Not only that, it's also worth the sacrifice my husband made to send me down this path. The extra mile may be long and it may be hard, but it's mine. As my brother-in-law told me after a particularly difficult and emotional talk, I should be proud of just being myself - he told me to just "stay being Jenna," and that that's all he could really ask for.  And as the conference taught me, nothing that's extra is ever easy. So no matter what others might say, I'll continue to meander my way down the only path I know. It's extra long and extra hard. But that's ultimately what makes it worth it - extra worth it.