I used to say that I didn’t have much of an ego.  I’ve never had much of a problem admitting when I screw something up.  I like to laugh at myself and self-denegrate.  It’s fun to poke fun at all of my foibles and quirks - there are so many!  So it’s weird, at 36, to realize that I really do have an ego, and it’s wrapped in a tight little package around my pride. 

Ego and pride are fine things to have.  They help make us secure or confident.  I don’t think anyone would argue that being those two things is bad.  However, right now, they are really getting in my way.  See, the problem is, I am grieving the loss of something very important to me. Actually, I am grieving the loss of a NUMBER of things that are very important to me.  Once I figured out (today, as a matter of fact) that I was grieving, it helped me get a handle on the process and the phases.  And maybe, just maybe, writing about it will help me get through the phases more quickly. 

Quoting from Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and from Wikipiedia:
The Five Stages of Grief
Denial: The initial stage: “It can’t be happening.”
Anger: “Why ME? It’s not fair!” (either referring to God, oneself, or anybody perceived, rightly or wrongly, as “responsible”)
Bargaining: “Just let me live to see my child(ren) graduate.”
Depression: “I’m so sad, why bother with anything?”
Acceptance: “It’s going to be OK.”

I’ve definitely finished with flying colors the “Denial” stage.  I hung out happily in Denial for quite awhile.  I also think I did Stage 3 before 2 - I kept trying to bargain with myself, my husband, and my internal understanding of what was really going on.  Now, however, after getting some sleep and being able to actually think coherently, I have definitely moved into the Anger stage.  And man, am I pissed.  What am I pissed about?  Well, I can’t get into specifics.  But I can say that I feel I have been a good, hard-working, ethical person, who has given 110% for a long, long time, and what is coming to me is Just. Not. Fair.  I think about some of the people in my professional life who have lied and cheated and used people to get where they are.  At the moment, they are sitting at the pinnacle of their careers.  Or it seems that way to me, down here.  The things that I have treasured about myself, many of which I have inherited from my father, seem to have failed me.  Persistence. Perserverance.  The ability to “just get it done”.  Hard work. Honesty.  Doing the right thing. 

Apparently, I also inherited my dad’s stubborn nature - and his pride, too.  Pride is a double-edged sword. It has made me strive to be the best I could possibly be.  Right now, though, it is preventing me from accepting what I must do - what has to be done - to survive.  And I am irritated and pissy with my pride.  I want to tell my pride to sod off and let me get on with Stages 4 and 5 of my grief.  I want to be okay again.  For the last year I have devoted just about every extra ounce of who I am to something.  And although I can say a million platitudes about how it didn’t really “fail” or “when a door closes, a window opens”, I am not there yet.

So please, let me have this opportunity to express, in as much detail as I can right now, that I am very, very sad.  I am also very angry at the moment.  I don’t understand everything yet - I’m not sure I will - but I do know, without anyone telling me, that “this too shall pass”.  I am, above all else, a survivor.  I look back at some of things I have survived in my life, not the least of all a very long, very disastrous unrequited love affair, starting a business with a newborn, getting Mike to fall in love with this disastrous girl who has dragged him through so much, and having - yes, having, a successful consulting pratice in the middle of the conservative male-dominated southeastern region of the US.  I have a lot of experience under my belt, in many ways.  I’ve worked for others, I’ve worked for myself.  And man, I am wicked-harsh to work for. 

Writing helps me.  Most don’t understand why I do it.  Or they fear that it is going to bite me in the butt later.  It might. I don’t really care.  I need to do whatever I can to move myself through the place I am, to get where I need to go. Yeah, yeah, life is all about the journey.  But I am dead-ass tired of the journey, and I need a break. I need some sleep, I need some rest, and my family needs a break.  My girls need a mommy and my husband needs a wife who isn’t a disaster. They deserve better.  They deserve the best of me . . . not the “end pieces” I’ve been doling out lately. 

I know many, many people have dealt with alcoholism in their families.  Sometimes I feel that it should give me comfort that it’s almost more normal to have an alcoholic in the family than not.  Usually, though, it just seems like cold comfort.

We’ve got an alcoholic in my extended family.  I remember talking with Sara about the situation, and the look on her face when she calmly put her fork down and said, “Alcoholics make a whole family sick.”  She was, as usual, dead on with that analysis.

Our family alcoholic has caused a lot of pain.  It’s driven a wedge between myself and the alcoholic, and now I am not really on speaking terms with that part of the family.  Worst of all, a child is involved, which means that I can’t really reach out to the child without going through the parents.  And they are the problem. 

It is strange to me that there are members of my family that are now invisible.  No one talks about them, but the pain we all feel is evident.  There are so many issues, wrapped up in one ugly ball.  There probably isn’t a way to fix the relationship at this point.  That part of the family believes that as long as the alcoholic is sober, there is no problem.  Unfortunately, I believe that the drinking is a symptom, and without a lot of help, the alcoholic isn’t going to get better. 

In my dreams, I wave a magic wand over the situation and we can all be family again.  Or I whisk their child away and give her a safe and stable life here with us.  In reality, I can’t do either.  All I can do is try to help myself deal with the situation.  I’ve been mulling over attending Alanon meetings. I think it might help, since I feel a combination of pure anger and huge guilt. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a way to separate the alcoholic from spouse or child. I tried - it doesn’t work. 

So for now, there is a part of my family that remains invisible - silent, but there. 

Those of you who read my blog regularly may know Tracy, who was Jennifer’s roommate in college and close friend for many years. She moved to Richmond a couple of years ago and works at the University of Richmond. In her most glamorous role, she is also Jennifer’s and my personal trainer. 

Tracy dated a guy named John after she moved here.  Sadly, they broke up this spring, but have kept in touch.  Over the weekend, John was visiting his family in upstate New York and was killed in a boating accident.  John was a police officer here in Richmond.  It seems so ironic that someone who worked in the city of Richmond ended up killed by a drunk boater.  Mostly it just seems like a big fat waste of a human life, and also the life of the woman who was with him. 

As a mother and a parent, protecting my children is always in the back of my mind - and sometimes in the front.  At strange times, worrying fear will overtake me - like when I signed my approval for Lily to take her first field trip, or another time, when her latest field trip was to a local park.  I thought about all the things that could go wrong, and spent some time with her discussing how important it was to stay close to her teachers, to not speak to strangers, to listen and obey the adults in her group. 

Many times I feel overprotective or paranoid.  I know Mike shares those same thoughts at times (like when I had to force his hand to let Lily swim at her daycare’s pool - he didn’t like the idea of her being in the water if one of us wasn’t there, even though he logically understood that there would be lifeguards and plenty of eyes watching her).  Then we’re confronted with what happened yesterday at Virginia Tech, and it couldn’t be more clear and cutting how very little we can really do to protect our children.  When Columbine happened, I was incredibly distant from the events - at the time, I was in Germany for work.  I remember getting up and heading down to the lobby for breakfast, and seeing something on German television about a school shooting.  My German was decent then, but the newscasters were talking so quickly I could only catch a few words here and there.  I asked one of the hotel employees who was more fluent in English than I was in German to tell me what happened.  I didn’t have children then, and although I felt shock and disbelief, it didn’t hit me the same way any tragedy has since I had our two children.  Until you have children, you can’t imagine the overwhelming fear that someday they will be taken from you.

This time it’s different.  I have my own children, and Virginia Tech is very close to where we live.  Although the feelings of shock and disbelief are the same, soon to be replaced by disgust, sadness, and anger, my feeling of powerlessness is completely different. 

Yes, I can teach the girls not to speak to strangers, to be cautious and suspicious as much as possible without completely ripping their childhood innocence from them.  However, as yesterday has shown, no one can really protect a child to the degree we as parents would like to.  The Tech shootings are affecting me much as the Harvey killings did a couple of years ago.  The sheer randomness - and the brutality of the crime - pulled all comfortable feelings of safety from me.  It also illuminated how powerless we can be to truly keep ourselves or our children safe from harm. 

I know many business colleagues here in Richmond with kids at Tech.  I desperately wanted to call them yesterday, but I was afraid to.  I didn’t want to intrude into something that was already stressful, and I frankly didn’t want to know - at least not yet - if one of their children had gotten caught in the tragedy there.  My need to offer support and concern was overshadowed by my fear of “bothering” them.  Today I sit here watching the live broadcast from Tech on msnbc.com, still wondering how many people I know or know of that will be personally affected by yesterday’s events.  Last night the names and identities began to trickle out, including high school yearbook photos of two Richmond-area Tech students who were wounded yesterday. 

I can see why parents go completely overboard on the overprotective scale.  I also try to balance my need to keep my children safe and close to me with what my dad calls the most important thing parents teach their children:  to be able to exist without them, to be healthy and independent adults.  The realist in me knows that there isn’t anything I can do to keep these bizarre and random acts from touching my life or hurting my children.  The uncontrollable nature of random violence can make me feel like I’m going crazy.  Last night as I cuddled Arden I looked into her eyes and just felt entirely peaceful for one moment that both of my children were home, and for the moment, safe. 

I’ve been surprised and comforted by the number of people out of state who have contacted Jennifer and me.  A number of the manufacturers we work with have sent notes of support and condolence though neither Jennifer or I have been directly affected.  Tech is nearby to Richmond, and a huge number of Richmonders have deep ties with the school.  Feeling like the rest of the world cares is helpful - even when there is nothing anyone can do right now. 

Tonight, I turned over my body and my last bit of pride to Tracy who has offered to use Jennifer and I as guinea pigs.  She just received her personal trainer certification and I fully expect the next 6-8 weeks to be full of Tracy’s voice screaming behind the treadmill, “Run, you bitches, run!!!”  Tracy reminded us that she was’t always Ms. Fitness Richmond 2007 and used to say the only reason you’d ever catch her running was if someone was behind her, trying to assault her.  This is the same person who recently completed the Ukrops 10K in less than 44 minutes or something insane like that. 

Still, I had to channel Dr. Phil all day just to make it through the evening’s measuring and analysis (I wonder if Mike knows that according to the BMI scale, he’s got an obese wife?).  I kept chanting in a fake Texas drawl, “Ya’ll cain’t change what ya’ll cain’t acknowledge.”  O-kay then.  I acknowledge myself, my reality, to the verge of barfing.  Well, 9 months of inactivity beginning in 2002 (forced by doctors for fear of miscarriage) plus no time between Lily and Arden to catch my breath equals a lot of weight gained and a lot of traction lost.  So today is the worst that it gets.  I faced those damned numbers, on the scale, on the measuring tape, and the dreaded body fat index thingy that has tormented me my whole life in the gym.  On Tuesday Tracy can begin her rant and her whip cracking, and we have the honor and priviledge of working out at one of the swankiest fitness centers in Richmond gratis.  I love Tracy, have I mentioned that? 

The big trick for me is balancing healthy eating with healthy exercising.  Did I mention my black and white, eating-disordered-for-centuries personality?  It’s a fine, slippery line I walk whenever I make attempts to reshape myself.  For the last few years, it’s been enough to simply be relatively healthy, in my barrel-shaped body, with my children and my business. Now it feels a bit like it did before I got married, where I wanted to reclaim those long-ago fleeting moments of actually liking - yes, liking - the space on earth I inhabit called my body. 

I don’t think for a moment I’ll ever be like I was in college - anorexia has a way of giving you QUITE a shape! - but I would settle for some healthy curves.  More than anything else, I need to feel like I have some control and power over what goes in and out of my body again.  Translated, that means caring enough about myself to give a shit about it.  This means making myself (my self) important enough to take time for and care for and love.  The fact that when I look back over the past 4 years and there are only a handful of pictures of me with my children or my husband is just sad.  Either I should accept the fact that I am what I am (fat) or take the reins and lose some weight. 

Today, I choose to feel empowered instead of allowing myself to wallow in self-pity and cram it down with some delicious chocolate.  Although Jennifer and I did devour half a leftover Easter Bunny with Troy after the measurements had commenced.  It was sort of a Farewell to Ears.