I am struggling so much. I'm exhausted. I just know some of our friends and family are sick of me being stressed. I am stressed when Izaiah is home, I am stressed when he's gone. I'm too busy when he's home, but too busy when he's gone. I'm sad that Dre is gone, and I still feel like I am too busy to do just about anything. I either work from 8am-8pm or I work and go straight from there to the hospital to see Izaiah until 8pm. Then I come home, eat, shower, pass out. Weekends feel crazy busy, too. We have great, wonderful friends who have been trying so hard to spend lots of time with us and keep us busy. I appreciate that so much, I really really do. But -
Disclaimer: Everything I am about to list are things that I love under normal (does that exist?) circumstances so please do not think I am a self centered brat.
This is how I'm feeling. I do not want to leave my house unless I feel like it in that particular moment. I do not want to talk to anyone on the phone. I do not want to go hang out with my friends at their houses or out somewhere. I do not want to play "Counselor" or listen to someone talk incessantly about their kid. I do not want people to laugh and joke and seem like they are having a great time. I do not want to spend what little time I have to help with someone's issue. I do not want to babysit anyone's kids. I do not want my husband to help you with something during the only free time I have to spend with him. I do not want my husband helping you at all right now, because we are having a hard enough time cleaning our house and raising our kids and paying our bills and working on our marriage.
I have to fight off the intense guilt for saying that because it is not in my nature to NOT do those things. Mark is that way, too. My siblings are that way. My parents are that way. When my mom was about my age, she had a series of nervous breakdowns and had to be hospitalized on and off. She says the reason is because she was trying so hard to be perfect. It's a little different for me than my mom because it's not perfection I'm trying to obtain. My aim is more of wanting to help everyone, make everyone feel loved, and to love me in return. If I don't feel like I am helping every person I talk to, I feel unsettled, awful, and guilty. If I allow the focus to be off of others and onto me, I am usually uncomfortable. I don't want to talk about me. I want to talk about you. Yet here I am, feeling like I have nothing to give and all I want to do now is talk about my life for a moment. Mark and I put everything into Dre and Izaiah and completely over-exhausted ourselves, more so due to Izaiah. When Izaiah left, we should have stopped and used that time to force ourselves to rest, read books, exercise, take walks, catch up with friends, etc. We did some of that, but mostly we just threw ourselves into other people's struggles, partially to completely distract ourselves from the throbbing silence at home. So when my dad died, we were already stretched so thin. Even with the boys being gone and my dad's death being two months ago, I have been even more exhausted just at the thought of hanging out with some friends for a chill game night. I hate it.
I've been getting frustrated when people ask how I'm doing, because I don't feel like anyone really wants me to delve into an hour of tearful, depressing account of my life lately. When they ask what they can do, I want to tell them that they cannot afford what I want to do, which is to sail away to Fiji or Crete and be alone with God in a beautiful, open, quiet bungalow for weeks and weeks. If I could fall and hit a rock, have amnesia, and come home and be oblivious of all the hard stuff we've recently been through, I'd do it. If that is far-fetched, then I want to sit in my living room on my comfy couch, with my dog and my dad's favorite cologne-sprayed shirt, and just cry. Cry and talk about my dad for hours and hours and everyone else be so sad. This is what I want. And Monopoly. I want to play a silent game of Monopoly and completely bankrupt the sucker who is brave enough to take me on. Grief is so weird.
Despite the guilt, I don't want to go go go until I completely crash like my mom did. I want to practice self care and not allow myself to go emotionally bankrupt. I want to allow myself to go garage sailing and rummage through the Goodwill outlet for 5 hours. I want to sit in my comfy living room and submit applications for free vacations and strategically figure out ways to make money using my coupons so we can pay off debt. I need to read books on how to parent my children better. I am way behind on writing those thank-you cards that I have been mentally writing in my head for the past 7 weeks. I want to sit and look at family photos all afternoon and listen to all my dad's favorite songs, which are naturally my favorite songs as well because I adored my dad and everything he did, said, ate, drank, listened to, laughed at...yada yada. I have been spending almost my every waking moment trying to learn how to live in this world without my Dad. This is probably what I will continue writing about for awhile. Everyone else's life is moving on and mine is not; I do not want to pretend it is.
So if you feel like listening or talking about my dad with me in my living room, come on over. If not that is fine. Hopefully I will feel like coming out of hiding soon. Thanks for reading.
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