I'm still shakin'

I'm still shakin' from writing that 'Letter to Susan' yesterday.  When I finished the last word, I started crying. After I cried for 10 minutes or so, it reminded me of that scene in Romancing the Stone, where Joan Wilder finished writing her story, sobbing with all those tears streaming down her face, that's what I looked like, that's how I felt.


I was crying about the love that I had for my deceased husband. Damn if I didn't still have tender feelings for him...after all that's been said and done.


Having those feelings emerge surprised me, maybe now I can continue with my life and thoughts of him aren't freeze framed at that one spot.  I mean I walked around with the image of him laying on the bedroom floor for a long, long time. After the gun went off he instantly fell to the floor. I screamed, a real blood curdling scream, not like those fake screams you hear at the Halloween store, and I bent down and touched his arm, ready to jump back in case he was gonna grab me or hit me for knockin' him down. He was 6'2", and about 250 lbs. and the only time I'd ever seen him fall down was when he was drunk. 


Nobody really messed with him, because he was so big, even my Dad was afraid of him. My hubby had a fight with a guy at a bar one night, my hubby must have beat the guy up pretty bad, because the next morning this guy shows up at our apartment, with a buddy, and there was a struggle at the door. Next day we had a 25 caliber hand gun in the house.


Well, I knew when I touched his hand that he was dead, but I ran to the phone and called 911 anyway. On the way to the phone, I looked in on my son, as he had been part of the scene just minutes before the gun went off. My hubby had gone into my son's room, got him out of his bed, and held my son in front of him as he stood in the bedroom doorway.  


The realization that I was pointing a gun at my son caused me to back off (this particular image has stayed with me as well, and often feeds my negative self-image as a parent) which caused my hubby to back off. But, the hubby showed up in the doorway again, with the gun still in his hand, and when he took one step, just one step, my survival instincts took over.  I did not rationally pull the trigger, it took me years of therapy to understand the power of my survival instincts. (I didn't know I had them!)


I don't know when I'll quit shakin' and it doesn't really matter. I truly believe that reliving the past, dredging up this stuff that is really, really stinky, (Ha, this stuff gets a 10 on my stink to high heaven scale!) I am feeling what I couldn't, wouldn't, didn't let myself feel back then. I had to get back to normal, get back to work, and get on with it. But now, no censoring, no holding back. It is what it is and I'm gonna get through it.