Tag Archives: Widow

My reptilian brain

Posted in Every day survival, New relationships, Uncategorized by
English: Artist interpretation of reptilian al...

English: Artist interpretation of reptilian alien. Human is shown for relative size. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Widows! You know that shame you feel when, even fleetingly, you have the desire to sleep with another man? The postman, the bus-driver, that bloke sitting opposite you right now – anyone will do.

You don’t want a relationship, or love, or even respect particularly, you just want to look up at a stubbly face from the vantage of a hairy (perhaps tattooed) chest and take in the warmth, the *smell, the closeness that has been missing from your life for sixteen long months. (*debateable).

In short, you want to engage in arguably one of the most life-affirming acts in order to feel…alive.

Perhaps, like me, you have already succumbed to the desire, and are currently listening to the sound of self-loathing and insatiable lust tussling with one another in your brain.

Well I wanted to share something I heard today in my counselling session which reassured me that my behaviour wasn’t as deviant as I’d imagined.

It turns out this is a well-documented phenomenon. Yes, other widows are doing it!

Faced with trauma and loss on this scale, humans refer to their reptilian brain, (I wasn’t even aware we HAD one!) and the familiar three ‘Fs’ of survival – Fight, Flight or Freeze – become four. I’ll leave you to ponder what the final one could be.

Psycho-babble or not, it sure as hell made me feel better.

Check-mate

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Chess Pawn

Chess Pawn (Photo credit: @Doug88888)

Widowhood sometimes feels like a game of chess. I studiously ponder a move, only to be knocked out by the rook I hadn’t seen coming on my left.

Someone told me that in widowhood, there are no rules. Life does seem to have taken on a boundless quality since M died. All previous assumptions have been upended, there is a sensation of free-fall. Tabula rasa. M’s death has changed every area of my life, from the TV programmes I watch, to the food I eat. But I have discovered that there are rules of engagement, even in the realms of widowhood. Hierarchies form, those with tenure arbitrate among the newcomers. But how can thoughts and feelings be arbitrated?

This blog is probably the most audacious of moves I’ve made so far – exposing the King, as it were, to the onslaught of the other pieces. Yes, my King is masked and anonymous, but he is exposed all the same. To some, this exposure may seem crass and inappropriate  – but then, so is sudden death.

As with everyone who comes careering into this new, unbidden life, I am feeling my way; blundering through the darkness, grabbing on to anything which resembles a lifeline – be that a rogue plumber or a clumsy Easter Egg metaphor. If I have infringed the boundaries of what some deem as acceptable by expressing my own grief in my own terms, so be it.