Checking the box

Have you ever felt like an imposter? Uncertain about whether you could pull it off. Whatever it was or whoever you were supposed to be at the time. I sometimes experience this when traveling. And I definitely have had this feeling when moving to a new place, not just a few miles away, but to another state or country, some location that was truly new. I was certain that everyone could sense that I didn’t belong there, that I wasn’t familiar with the norms. It’s not that others ever made me feel this way. It was just my own insecurity. Uncomfortable in my own skin in that new place. The voice in my head saying, who do you think you are?

I had this same sense in the months following Tim’s death. I felt like an imposter. I had a new role. And going about my day, I was carrying this oversized entity of loss, like a secret, or a giant ball of mystery in me and no stranger knew what it was. At the same time, I thought they could tell that something was off about me. I felt entirely exposed and yet completely unseen. I was trying to figure out who I was, because I felt so changed. And it was lonely, in some strange way, that this part of me wasn’t more understood by others.

I didn’t quite know how to be in this same body and mind, when suddenly my life felt so different.

There was a conundrum though. Because actually trying to define myself to others, who didn’t already know me, was even worse. During that first year especially, I tried an assortment of words and details to see what felt the most like me. And likewise, I experienced varying reactions each time that I had to say, or felt a need to reveal, that I had recently lost my partner.

These reactions were not wrong, though a few of them felt infinitely better for me than others. I have come to learn that how people respond to your loss is sometimes more about them than you. But it is all still a very real example of how confusing  it can feel when meeting new people, running into old friends, or moving forward with the administration of your life. People may have been categorizing me, but I was also categorizing myself. Defining who I was by an event no matter how much I didn’t want to.

And what about that first time you check the box, “widow,” on an endless sea of forms.  I remember saying to a nurse taking my personal info over the phone when she asked, “married or single?” And I replied with some uncertainty, “actually, widowed, does that matter?” And she said, oh yes, it does.

That check mark, with literally no context, made me feel lost and alone. Because most strangers didn’t know anything else, didn’t care to know anything else, and never would know anything else about Tim or me and my situation. I guess part of the complexity of this is that as humans we all want to be seen and understood. And now that I have this thing that is such a part of me but rarely discussed, what do I do with that? How do I get seen without being that sad woman in the corner who never opens up out of fear of being hurt again, or that annoying widow in the middle of the room who can’t stop talking about how amazing her partner was. (Well, I guess one way to be seen is you write a blog! LOL!)

In a recent grief group session, we each shared our experience of being labeled or the feeling when you are asked to literally check the box. And after listening I said, you know it’s such a big deal for us to check that box, but the funny thing is that probably no one, ever really looks at “those forms” and absorbs that info. It’s just a piece of data that goes in a computer.

And so we had to laugh. Some things feel so real. So raw.

I realized the other day that I have been checking the single box for nearly my entire life.  I skipped right over the married box. It was only relevant for 26 hours.

I am not caught up in labels. I don’t find how we categorize ourselves to be all that important. But we use them in many ways to help us understand the world around us. Regardless of the box I am forced to check, I still want to be seen and understood at least on some surface level by those around me. And of course in a much deeper way by my friends, family and those that I love. And to the best of my ability, I want to feel less like an imposter and more like me.