Sometimes being an adult is no fun.  Being a mom with kids is fun and of course rewarding much of the time, but now I find that decisions I made easily before (as a married suburban mom) are so very difficult right now.  Today I put myself first - my kids first - and although that is the “right” decision, it hurts a lot.  Quite frankly, I’ve tired of hurting all the time. Those moments where I feel peace, or joy - they are crack to me, and I want more of them.  I can sense that as I put one foot in front of the other there will be more moments of pure sunshine, but they are few and far between right now.

Today was bad enough that I had the telltale tingling extremities.  My face went numb, my heart went nuts, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe.  I never carry my emergency stash of chill pills anymore, but that won’t happen again.  I need to be more boy scout (always be prepared!) and less super woman (who needs drugs to manage panic?  not me!). 

Today was another tiny step, and another version of the realization I’ve had since this all began.  Nothing makes it easier.  Support helps navigate this mess, but I have to go through the emotions. There are no shortcuts, no distractions big enough to pull me away from what I need to feel. 

I am sitting in my living room and feeling completely and utterly overwhelmed by the stuff around me.  In other moves, within 1 week I’ve had everything neatly stored - in some cases, even the pictures were hung and the house was clean.  I’m more than a week into this now and it looks almost worse.  I have no energy. I want to sleep.  I want to eat, I don’t want to run, and I want to really hide in my bed for a minimum of 24 hours.  I’ve been here before and know how intense these feelings can be, and I know that they will fade and subside and I will be just fine. Or better than fine - I will be great. 

I’m going to write this down because I’ve been saying it in my head to many people:  because I asked for this doesn’t make it less hard. Going through wedding albums, reading engagement cards, picking through the things that my husband felt were too painful for him to deal with and having to throw those things away was heart-rending.  I’ve never been faced with the reality of the divorce more than I was putting things into boxes, filling trash bag after trash bag, forcing myself to not be overly sentimental, forcing myself to keep the wedding albums because I know the girls will want to see them one day. 

As I made yet another trip to the Wyndham house today, I wandered upstairs and felt myself coming unglued again. The house looks sad and bleak.  There are random leftovers from a life lived there; a tiny smiley-face bead from a necklace of Arden’s, rolled carelessly into a corner where it will be consumed hungrily by a vacuum.  Half of an earring.  A leftover scrap of Thora’s rawhide.  A stick of butter; a dying plant.  It looks like ghosts live there now, even though I can still smell the smells of my kitchen or bedroom, and feel the cool tile under my feet. 

This new house feels safe to me - it has so many locks and doors and places to hide.  Underneath the smell of animal from previous tenants, the good hardwood smells are still here.  Because it’s so different from my previous life, it feels welcoming. It also feels alien and a bit scary.  I have a few security blankets and I had to get rid of one today.  There’s a fine line between getting warmth from a blanket and being smothered by one. 

I’m trying to focus on breathing, and warming myself.