I wasn’t going to write this.
It’s nineteen minutes past eleven and I’ve been convincing
myself for a solid ten that I was going to head to bed.
Don’t write it. You
need to get to bed. You’ve got a lot
going on tomorrow – just forget it. You
need your rest. You don’t need to write
it.
Yet here I am.
Where have I been this last month?
My heart contracts and tears begin to fall, just thinking
about it.
To be honest, I’ve been wallowing. I’ve been burying my head in the sand and
pretending that my life is not about to change.
Oh, but it is.
Everywhere I look there are reminders. There’s a stack of moving boxes sitting in
our entryway. There’s a pile of photography
props in the garage ready to go to new owners and my windows look bare and depressing
without my beautiful curtains hung any longer.
Everywhere I turn there are more reminders. I drive by our preschool and catch myself
wondering if the construction will be finished in their parking lot before
school starts.
Oh, that’s not our school anymore.
I get invited by a group of friends to join their bar crawl next
month in support of breast cancer research.
Oh, I won’t be here next month.
Miss Priss asks me if we can go to the Apple Cider Mill and
drink apple cider like we did last October.
Oh, we won’t live near the cider mill this October.
And the closer we get to our moving date – July 31 - the further I fall into this deep dark hole.
Everyone I know has been so kind in all this. Friends around the country have been so supportive
– texting me and checking in on me and filling my calendar with all sorts of
farewell shindigs.
But inside, I feel myself screaming and wanting to hate
them. Come July 31st their
worlds don’t fall apart. Their worlds don’t
turn upside down. And come August 1st,
their lives will go on. They’ll go back
to their playdates, and dance classes and preschool parent-info nights. They’ll go back to their color-coded
calendars and back-to-school schedules. They’ll
go back to life as they know it.
While mine goes to ground zero.
New house, new neighbors, new schools, new schedules, new
life.
And for the first time ever, new is the last thing I
want. I want old and comfy and
predictable.
This hurts. All of
it. Mentally and physically I feel like
I’ve gone to war. And am losing battle
after battle. It’s taken its toll on my
children, my marriage, my friendships.
As I’m trying to keep my head above water and not go down in flames, I
wonder how long I’ll stay afloat.
And I wasn’t planning on writing this. I didn’t intend to share this with the
world. This pain. This suffering. This feeling of sheer dread about the days to
come.
But I’ve got faith in my Creator. And I’ve got faith in the inner-works of my
own mind. I know there’s a strength in
there somewhere and eventually the load will feel lighter.
And for me to appreciate it… for me to really see the good
in the end, I need to remember the bad.
I need to write down how dark it feels in these moments. How scared I am for what is to come. So that when its months down the road and I’m
feeling myself again, I’ll be able to look back and see how far I’ve
really come.
And those days will come, I don’t doubt it.
