This is a Really Real Widow Post.

There’s so much guilt mixed up in grief.

It’s like, no matter how much I try to just sit down my title of widow, it’s just there, and even if I could sit it down, I’d feel guilty about that, and the fact that I can’t sit it down, makes me feel guilty because I have a girlfriend.

This last week has been one of those traps.

I’ve been thinking a lot about marriage.  I know it’s something I want again and I know it’s not time yet, however, I’m still preoccupied with thoughts of Wonder Woman and I, and when, and if, and how, and, and, and. . . . it’s just what I do.

Who? ME?  Overthink?  Yes!  Always!

And then I realize my wedding anniversary is coming up, and I feel guilty because I got a few days into February without even realizing that it was the month I was married to Parker.

And then I feel even more guilty because I don’t even have any feels about the upcoming anniversary that will never be celebrated.

And then I feel even MORE guilty because I wonder if I somehow did remember, subconsciously, that it was my wedding anniversary and if that’s why I was thinking about weddings and marriage and Wonder Woman and I, and how wrong is it to think about a wedding to a dead woman and then have thoughts of marrying the woman I love now?

And there’s all this guilt floating around.

And I’m beating myself up over all of it.

Either I grieve too much, and it’s too much to put on Wonder Woman.  Or I don’t grieve enough and I’m not paying enough widow penance.

All of this is internal guilt, no one that matters is putting any of this on me.  Wonder Woman has never once said my grief was too much, and has always left space for my grief and Parker in our relationship (even when I think we don’t need it).  But I often wonder and worry, what isn’t she saying.

And what is the outside world thinking.

And then I also just judge myself even without thinking about any of that.  If I’m not still crumbled in a ball on the floor a few times a month did our time together really count?  If I can move forward this “quickly” was I really in love or I was I just faking it.  Did I imagine that first year of grief, was it really as bad as it seemed, maybe I was faking that too.  How did I go from all of that, to barely remembering that 6 years ago tomorrow, I said “I do” to the woman I planned to spend “Always and Forever, Forever and Always” with.

But it is really nothing, now?  If it was really “nothing” would I be sitting in the college library tearing up over those thoughts?

Grief is different now, but it’s still there.  Of course it is part of my relationship with Wonder Woman, because it’s such a huge part of who I am and you can’t have me without having that part of me.

Did my anniversary make me think about weddings?  Maybe, maybe not.  But that doesn’t change the way I feel about Wonder Woman and the thoughts I have about our future together.  It’s no different then seeing a wedding on TV and that being the catalyst.

Letting myself free from the guilt is hard.  But I think it’s a part of the grief.  It’s a part of my journey.

Everyone has a different path, and sometimes I forget that the path that I’m on is perfectly valid and okay.

I’m allowed to do this my own way.

And I don’t need to carry the guilt.