Thoughts on Losing One's Self Through Loss

Owen wasn't the only thing buried in the grave that day.  So was my identity and sense of self.

When my first marriage ended in failure, I worked very hard to craft an identity that was not dependent on a relationship with a man, based on some books I was reading to help me through the aftermath of divorce.  One book that greatly influenced me was by Sylvia Friedman entitled, Men Are Just Desserts:  How Learning to Be a Woman with a Life of Your Own can Enrich the Life you Share with a Man.  The basic gist of the book was that women build their sense of self around their relationship with a man and when they lose the man, they lose themselves.  The trick is to not make your relationship with a man the center of your identity.  Have your own interests and develop your personality and relate to one another on that basis as mature adults and not as a shadow of your man.

This made a lot of sense to me at the time.  When my marriage collapsed, I forsook my married name and went back to my maiden name so that I could reclaim what little there was left of me after that experience.  It took some time to grow back into my family name and I found the transition unsettling.  There was a point in time where I no longer considered myself Cheryl G______, but neither did I yet feel like I was Cheryl Hannah.  The weird sense of not being yourself due to a name change is something very few men have to go through.

When I met Owen, I was determined to be my own woman in our relationship.  I basically said that if he wanted to take me on, I wasn't going to change my name again.  Instead, I would use Nicholson as a courtesy title with a hyphen attached to my last name. It wasn't a desire to be a woman's libber that prompted this, but rather a vain attempt to not lose myself again.  Owen was happy to have me on those terms and so began our marriage with both of us free to be ourselves but together.  

I didn't reckon on the strength of the one-flesh relationship that happened. 

I had been an emotional wreck at the end of my first marriage, but it wasn't because I had lost that one flesh relationship. Honestly, I think it had never really formed. My first husband has some personality quirks that make it difficult for him to form relationships with people.  I had lived for 28 years sublimating most of who I was out of the desire to survive a very costly experience.   I cried more over the betrayal that my elders inflicted on me in their misguided attempt to be "faithful" to G.O.D. than I did over the end of that marriage.  

When it became apparent to me that Owen was in the process of dying, I put on a brave face to the world.  One day at church a woman made a remark about "Owen and Cheryl" and I fled to the bathroom to cry in a stall because I realized that the days were coming to a close where my name would be coupled with his.  We were a unit and that unit was fast approaching dissolution.  All my fine resolution to retain a strong sense of self crumbled like a sand castle hit by a wave.  I was about to lose the most vital and best part of who I had become.

Then it happened.  In a brief moment Owen transitioned from life to Life and I transitioned from wife to widow.  The shock and numbness held the full realization at bay for several months.  I knew, at an intellectual level, that I was no longer married and no longer someone's sweetheart.  The intensity of that knowledge took some time to bite deeply.

I would like to tell you that I am doing better and regaining a sense of who I am.  Most days that is true.  The fact is that we can't help but define ourselves always in relation to others.  I am someone's daughter, someone's friend, someone's mother, sister, teacher, coach and once in a while, their nemesis.  And all of those things that I am are always resting on a relationship.   When we lose that relationship, whether through death, divorce, or distance, in some sense we lose a part of ourselves.

John Donne was right -- no man or woman is an island unto themselves.