a new season

I should be sleeping. Life has gotten so crazy in just one week.

I started massage therapy school. I took a second job working with babies 3 days a week. Axl started Kindergarten. Ford started school (he comes with me to the new job). Our schedules have shifted completely, I’m out of the house 3 days a week after 5 years of working only at home. Soon Axl will start at an after school program too, so on the days I’m not working my 2nd job, I can put more time into my remote job for the ice cream place.

I have bitten off way more than I can chew, but I figure… who am I to say no to career opportunities or making more money? I never saw myself being back in the childcare field, but it does feel so good to be putting those college credits to use finally and I feel lucky it comes so naturally that it hasn’t been all that stressful so far. But I am exhausted. I got my first migraine today in months; I hadn’t had one since I was pregnant. I only tend to get them when my body is under a lot of stress, so I know it was a sign that I need to be taking care of myself while I bust my ass. 

It’s stressful being the sole provider now to both my kids. It feels like having several careers and side hustles going at the same time is what I SHOULD be doing. Just in case. I do like staying busy; it’s always rough at first, but I love the feeling of crawling into bed at night knowing I have truly squeezed every ounce of possibility out of the day. I feel accomplished. I like showing the boys what it looks like to work hard. I think it’s hard for Axl to understand that I have a job sometimes, since I’ve always done it from home alongside him and have been able to still tend to his needs and put him first. My kids always come first, of course, but I am glad he is seeing me having to get myself ready for the day just like he does, and that he’ll be going to after school care with all the other kids who have working parents. I short-change myself all the time not allowing myself to think of myself as a true “working parent” just because I work from home. But the reality is that I’ve been working tirelessly every day for the last 5 years raising my kids, taking care of my household, and also bringing home a paycheck. But no one really sees it. So even if I’m feeling very overbooked right now, there is some satisfaction in being the kind of busy that is visible from the outside. People are seeing me scramble from place to place, drag my laptop to work with the babies so I can check my email on my break, making work calls as I sit in the car line to pick up Axl from school, ask for favor after favor from my family to make all the pieces fit.

But for once it feels like we’re exactly where we’re supposed to be. Taking Axl into the same school where I nervously had my first day of kindergarten too, where my grandfather worked for many, many years, where 4 generations of my family have all attended and loved. Working at a school for young children, where I keep running into people I went to high school with and discovering we were all having babies in all the same years, getting to take care of the babies of long-forgotten middle school friends. How does it all feel so completely right when it happened because of something that was so completely wrong?

How can life be filled with so many dichotomies? I started this morning watching the sunrise over the mountains as I fed Ford a bottle, and the grief in my heart was so heavy that I cried. I’ve never been so happy and so so deeply sad at the same time. This week has just been so full of Big Deals that I have been stuffing down deep inside because I don’t have the time to deal with the grief that is begging to be felt. I hate that I had to experience Axl’s first day of school alone. I hate that Pete isn’t here to go through Axl’s school folder with me every day. I hate that there are all these orientations and meet and greets and mingling events and I’m forced to wander around like an idiot, silently praying no one talks to me because they’ll eventually ask why we moved here.

We moved here because my f*cking husband died. And I’m simultaneously so sick of talking about it and so desperate to be talking about it always that it is crazy-making. 

I could type for hours about the emotions this week is bringing up. And I know if I don’t let it all out soon it’s not going to be good, but I don’t have time for grief right now. Maybe subconsciously that’s why I’m so desperate to stay busy. I’m thankful for it this week, this week chock-full of firsts that I’m heartbroken to be doing alone, but I’m wondering how long I can sustain this attempt to outrun my grief.