I joined a group of widows the other night. I have moved from the relative comfort of online anonymity to the discomfort of open face to face forum. My naturally shy nature cringes away from any type of large group setting. It is only rarely that I fit in. Even in a group such as this one, which is primarily for younger widows, where the odds of fitting in are at about 99%, I still manage to feel like an outsider.

I came to W.E.T. (widows in transition) via the Young Widows Board, which was founded by 911 widows. I responded to an appeal for Iowans by a woman named CJ and was quickly invited to the monthly gathering of W.E.T.

I have to admit to being excited about it. I have never had the opportunity to be “normal” during this entire journey. In a room full of widows, surely I would feel a kinship and at home. Not really. Not that everyone wasn’t nice. They were wonderful and inviting. The group’s founder, Sandy, was genuinely happy to see new members and greeted both CJ and I warmly. Others, who were already there or as they arrived, made more than an effort to engage us.

CJ turned out to be one of those naturally extroverted people who can make talk, small and large. She easily worked the room. A kitchen with an island overflowing with food and crammed to standing room with widows.

I am not so gifted. It was one of the things I loved about being married. Someone to shadow without seeming to. I could hang by my husband’s side and not worry that anyone thought I was being stand-offish when in reality I was just painfully uncomfortable being in a situation where I knew no one and hadn’t the opportunity to assess the “danger” beforehand.

I don’t believe in shyness really. What people call shy, I just call self-preserving. I am easily overwhelmed and overly sensitive to my environment. When I have the time to size things and people up, I usually find a way to turn down the volume on my inner alert system and interact. When I don’t, I retreat. I am much better one on one and perhaps that is why I do so much better on the boards.

Even though the numbers are larger in reality, you can only deal with one person at a time. The thing that struck me about this group, aside from their welcoming ways, was the fact that many of the women seemed to enjoy telling their stories in much the same way that a group of new mothers gleefully recount their L&D stories. And maybe that is just the way of it. War stories are inevitable in like company.

I find it hard to tell my story anymore. I give the short version. I skim off the top. I downplay or simply don’t play at all. There was a time when I would recount the whole thing chapter and verse but now I would rather not. I am so consumed by where I am and what I want and trying to build the bridge between here and there that telling my story almost seems a burden that holds me back.

I had a husband. He died. We sat in a circle and introduced ourselves and our husbands. I cried through mine. It is harder to hold up the shields when I know I don’t have to and also, there was some relief being somewhere that I don’t have to.

I barely listened to the others though. At least not enough to recall much. It was too much. Pain. And I recoiled from a lot of it. It terrified me to think that women months and years ahead of me could still be in so much pain, and not want to move past it.

One woman was three years out, remarried and still not happy. How could that be? If you never learned to live again, what was the point?

I took my daughter to a children’s group today. Founded by the same woman, it gives children and their moms an opportunity to grieve safely among their own kind. My daughter is young. All her memories of her father are primarily images and ideas that I planted in her mind. She is a few years away from really comparing her life with that of other children and realizing what she has lost.

But, I could see it in the faces of the older ones, and in the faces of the moms. Do I look like that? I don’t want to. I want to be… I don’t know. I can’t not be a widow.

The other day the substitute for the man I normally work with inquired whether I was a Mrs. and I hesitated before saying, “Not anymore.” Normally I would have told him that I my husband was dead. I don’t use the word widow as a self-reference. But I did neither. Because I don’t know who I am.  So, once again I don’t truly fit in. Story of my life.