This morning started at around 4:15, with Emily whining and asking for both of us…”dada…..daaaaada….mom…..mooooma….mom….dad…..”. Hearing that in the darkness is not a welcoming sound, even when she sounds happy and giggles between the different requests. She drifted in and out of sleep, and me along with her, until about 5:45 at which time I got up to get her. She sat in the middle of her crib, and giggled when I walked in as if to say “haha woman, I win!”. She’s lucky she’s so stinking cute on days like this or she would have been sold to the Amish a very long time ago.
I cried in the shower this morning, good and hard. I think it was a combination of things – exhaustion, feeling like I had to be everything to everyone (mommy and caregiver, partner (and caregiver), dedicated employee that would be on the top of her game and present to an important audience today on only a few hours of sleep) and thoughts from the prior day. I know that I shouldn’t get fixated on Easter, her birthday, my birthday but damn it is hard not to. The past few days have just been consuming with thoughts of that empty chair at the dining room table and the lack of my annual birthday phone call. I know I shouldn’t let it take over my brain; no good ever comes of it but I do it anyway. Kind of like when you were a freshmen in college and you knew you shouldn’t hang out with the guy that’s walking around giving out free beers, but you do it anyway and when you wake up the next morning sick as a dog and unable to remember your own name. You knew it was a bad idea, you knew what the next day would bring, but you did it because you were there (and hey, what freshmen is gonna pass up free beer???).
I’m not trying to insinuate that I’m a glutton for punishment; although there are days that make me wonder if that’s my problem. I dwell and dwell and can’t let go of something until it’s driven me to the point of uncontrollable sobbing. I try to let go and get passed certain things – like remembering her waiting for us every Thursday and how she couldn’t wait to see Emily, remembering what she looked like that day at the doctor’s when I knew it was bad and what it felt like in that moment to know that she was on borrowed time – but there are things, new things, all the time and that’s tough to deal with some days. Almost every day I think of something she will miss, or I remember something that makes me miss her more, and that’s hard. I get beat up day after day by my own mind and my own emotions and I can only get hit so many times before I start to hit back, and those are my bad days.
I am doing my best to find joy where ever I can. My daughter, thankfully, is a big goofball and keeps me laughing. Just last night, she figured out how to tumble (I think my mom would have called it “ass over tea-kettle” – which I just remembered she used to say) and that had me in stitches. I was so proud, you would think she had just won a gold medal at the Olympics. She’s funny and smart and absolutely beautiful and she is my joy (just as she was my mom’s). I try to find joy in sitting on the couch with Rob at the end of the day, quietly watching some stupid TV show together. I try to even find joy while I’m at work – even if it means the only joy is the music that’s popping up on my iphone (one of my favorites – Marry Me by Train is on right now). I miss just being happy because I’m naturally happy in my life; happiness shouldn’t be this hard to find. Sometimes I don’t find it at all and those are my most miserable days; thankfully I haven’t had one of those in a bit. But still, I don’t expect them to be gone. It’s been two months today and yet, it feels as if it hasn’t even happened yet. Today, it just doesn’t feel real but also feels all too real at the same time. When I talk about my parents, I sometimes have to correct myself and say “my dad” instead of “my parents” because I don’t have two of them anymore. And even as I write those words, there is still this part of my brain that’s saying “WHAT?? What do you mean you don’t have two of them anymore????” as if that part of my brain was in the Caribbean on a beach somewhere (being fanned by a hot pool boy) for those two weeks. If a part of my brain was on a beach with a hot pool boy and it left the rest of me here, man, I am going to put that brain part on punishment pronto.
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