14 months ago my wife died. My life at the moment is quite exciting.
Now I obviously don’t mean the latter sentence to be a corollary of the former. But they are more linked than it may seem.
Losing someone very close to you, such as a partner, isn’t easy. I have struggled in the time since Dimitra died, have worried about the future and felt pretty unsettled, often more than I admitted to myself.
But, at least in part because I never had to worry about practical things, it never felt like something I wouldn’t be able to overcome. It always felt liked something that, because it wouldn’t kill me, would make me stronger. It did.
This life experience has made me a better person. A stronger one, who can deal with things affecting me and others. The kind of person person who I always wanted to be but someone never really managed to become.
And that is exciting.
Suddenly finding myself single again and after slowly untangling myself from my relationship with Dimitra, I am now forced to look at questions like: who am I? What do I like? What do I really want to do in life? What do I need to do in life. I had not really looked at any of those questions that seriously since my mid-20s.
In the past year, I have discovered more new music than I had in the ten years before. I haven’t read more books, because I already read a lot, but my reading has become more purposeful and focused rather than pure entertainment. I have made many new friends. And I have been thinking about next jobs.
That is really exciting too.
It is still unclear what my future looks like, other than that I have now set things in motion for things to become quite different and also, at least in the journey there, quite difficult. But, as I keep telling myself, things being difficult is a feature not a bug. I need for this to be difficult rather than find some kind of shortcut to a next phase in life.
Really, that too is exciting.
I feel very privileged to have been given the opportunity at this phase in my life to get to know myself better, become a better person and to look for where I can make a real difference.
In some poetic sense, Dimitra showed her love for me by stepping aside and giving me this opportunity. I can only reciprocate that love by doing my utmost best to live a good life.
And that is the most exciting thing of all.