I was having an off day. There were too many not-so-right things happening, adding up to a perfect storm of emotions and fragility. I should know better to hunker down and let it pass. But then again, this new emotional me is still so, well, new. Rick was home for an unexpected afternoon, so I jumped at the opportunity to run quick errands without the girls. (Two girls in car seats does not a quick trip make.) I needed to keep it local for the quickness part, so off to the local mall I went. Let me just tell you I'm highly disappointed in our town these days. I've been highly disappointed in our fellow citizens who make very bad choices in their life that significantly impacts how safe I feel for my family. I just feel like people are doing desperate things during desperate times. I will step of my soap box about it, because this is not the place to rant about local crime. Our local mall is not the best place to go on a good day, and this wasn't a particularly good day for me. But again, quick and efficient was my plan for errands. I had a few ideas I wanted to entertain in Hallmark. Focused on the prize, I simply had tunnel vision. But then the prize was not to be found and I had to browse for other options. This is the life lesson part. I started reading inspirational placards and looking at those Willow Tree angels and my mind traveled quickly to not so pleasant places. Now here was the true test: fight or flight? I could have walked right out of there and booked it straight home to do what I should have done in the first place--hunker down. But then I was already here and I needed to get those things checked of the Christmas list. So I made myself a compromise; keep it together until I found my purchases and then go home without another errand to run. And that's what I did. The drive home gave me plenty of time to pull it back together and get on with the mommy duties. But you better believe I will not walk into Hallmark again if I have the slightest bit of emotions running through my blood. I'm still trying to put my finger on what set things spiraling into an emotional free fall in the first place. It's almost like a window opens up in my brain and releases such intense pain and sorrow, and then with all my effort and will I inch that window closed and go on with the day. I wonder if that's how one would feel all the time--that intensity of emotions--if one actually used their whole potential of brain? I'll stop now, so as not to get too philosophical and Pink Floyd on everyone.
I do know that something in my subconscious conjured up thoughts of Julia. I have this milestone coming up of when Ava came home from the hospital and I was able to start tagging happy memories to certain things again. It's been almost over a year of haunted memories and I'm looking forward to the happy ones diluting the sad ones a bit. I find that as Ava gets older, the conversation is shifting to a more comfortable level of small talk with other parents at the park or just public places that put strangers in the path of conversation. "Is she starting to walk?" replaces "Where did you give birth?" and all those other newborn baby questions that are seemingly innocent unless you are faced with someone dealing with loss and the struggle of a premature baby in the NICU. Where I would silently place Julia in parenthesis when talking about my pregnancy and only talking about Ava while feeling disingenuous for not mentioning Julia, or saying "she" when my mind screamed "THEY." Now questions about Ava's place as a little sister or teething or crawling, all that fun stuff is in the forefront of idle chat. I never really had a staged answer in those days of newborn-ness, and I'm sort of relieved that the frequency of that awkward conversation has passed. But I'm now reminded that as those topics become more infrequent, the feeling of loss doesn't along with it. And as I used to brace for those inevitable questions, now when one comes out of the blue I feel sucker punched.
That night after the mall experience, when the girls were tucked in to sleep, all I wanted to do was zone out to some light TV. Rick asked if I was coming to bed soon and I told him I just needed to decompress a bit. He sat down next to me and asked if I wanted to talk about it. This was a huge step for him. In the past, we've tiptoed through these moments and then I'd give him my full wrath of anger that he avoided me during the time I needed him. I should have told him how I was feeling but instead I just told him I didn't want to talk about it. He did exactly what I wanted him to do and I did the exact opposite of what I should have done in response. I guess it goes to show that there is no right answer, only the in-this-moment type of reaction. And you know what's amazing about Rick, what is exactly what I needed at that moment? He went to bed, and he never held it against me. I would have confronted him with it, would have thrown it back in his face that we had talked about this before. So as much as I chide him about those "man" things I have to put up with, I really do appreciate that he is just that sometimes. Another life lesson to wrap up my Hallmark day.
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