Defining Myself

Forgive me ahead of time if this makes very little sense... it isn't making a whole lot of sense to me, either, and that's why I'm writing it out.

A few days ago, a friend of mine at work said, "You don't want to be seen as 'that guy whose wife died' forever." That statement really stuck with me for some reason and I haven't been able to get it off of my mind. Honestly, that's how I've seen myself for almost a year now... and while I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing (because, after all, I am that guy), I wonder sometimes how long it will take me to stop thinking of myself that way.

I was once a husband and a caregiver... now I'm a widower... but I'm also a teacher (temporarily), a friend, a son, a student, etc. I've been thinking about the emphasis I put on each of these, and I've got to admit that widower comes first. When I think about who I am, the first thing that always comes to mind is, "Well, I used to be married to this great gal... but I guess now I'm alone." I think it is natural to define oneself by the tragedies we've faced, but at what point does it become unhealthy? At what point should I start seeing myself as "just me" rather than "that guy whose wife died last year"?

This whole issue of thinking about how much the events of 2009 have had on how I identify myself came to a head this afternoon while I was chatting online. It is interesting how something like Facebook can make a person reexamine himself. An old friend from high school, one I haven't spoken to in eight years or so, sent me a message saying, "Your wife is beautiful." I think my jaw hit the floor. In my self-centered little world, I just assumed that everyone knew... but she didn't. She couldn't have known. She hadn't spoken to me in years and she just saw on my profile that I was married, looked at my pictures, and gave Jenni a compliment.

After I explained the situation and did my best to make sure she didn't feel horrible for the mistake, I went into my profile and tried to change my relationship status to "widowed." The first thing I noticed was the little message that says, "Your relationship will be cancelled upon saving." I'm not sure why, but the word cancelled just struck me as really... horrible, I guess... can't think of a better word at the moment. And the program doesn't keep "widowed" in the box either... it changes to "single" automatically... which doesn't describe how I feel either.

I really want to change it to "It's Complicated" because if it won't let me say widowed, then complicated is a lot closer to the truth than either married or single. Of course, the "It's Complicated" option requires a confirmation from Jenni, who obviously can't confirm. The whole durned thing is complicated... and really, I don't guess it matters too much in the long run what my relationship status says on Facebook. I just really don't want to go through that explanation again... but I don't want to change my status to "single" and have people think I'm back on the market either. Then again, it might be less emotionally taxing to explain that I'm not looking for a relationship than it was to explain how the flight of my life entered a nosedive back in March '09... it will at least come up less often...

I don't know. I'm leaving it as is for now.

I should have been working on school stuff, but I've been writing this instead. I'm so far behind now that I don't know how I'll make it through tomorrow without something being late... but I had to sort out my thoughts a bit... and perhaps someone will leave me some profound piece of advice to help me sort this out.