turning the faucet off

It’s been so long since I’ve written. I avoid it for weeks sometimes without even realizing it. Not only am I almost too busy to function, sometimes I think there’s an aspect of needing to protect myself by taking some time off of writing. I don’t like turning my emotions off; I don’t like how it feels being closed off from them… but there are weeks that if I want to get out of bed in the morning and get us out the door and do my work and make the lunches and buy the groceries and do the anatomy assignments and sign the paperwork and run the errands and return the phone calls and wash the dishes (and and and and…) I just can’t always be wallowing in my grief the way I know I should be from time to time in order to continue to process it healthily. I have to just turn it off like a faucet to exist sometimes. I don’t like it; I know how difficult it always is to get them flowing again.

So many good things happening, but I hate that they’re happening without Pete. Ford turned one; we had his first birthday party. The fall foliage burned bright as fire. Axl carved pumpkins. He found a four-leaf clover, at random, just wandering through the goat pen. I know that was Pete. Axl had his first playdate. I’m days away from (hopefully) closing on a home for us after nine months living in this studio apartment. Parent-Teacher conferences. Doctor checkups. Trunk-or-Treat. All things that he never would’ve missed.

I get really sad at my daycare job sometimes. Lots of the kids exclaim, “dada!” throughout the day. The teachers reply: “dada is at work! He’ll be here later!” and my heart sinks to my toes. Ford knows how to say “dada,” what would they say to him if he started spouting that at school? A little boy brought me a book to read today. He crawled in my lap and I looked down to find “I Love My Daddy Because” and then had to make it through at least ten pages of father-child pairings of animals listing things their dads do with and for them. Every single one something Pete did religiously with Axl. My throat was tight and I wanted to scream, but there’s another example of a time I just have to shut the damn faucet off. I can’t hurl that book across the room and tell a 2-year-old make sure you hug your daddy tight because he might just drop dead one day while you’re downstairs and you’ll never see him again which is what I would do if I rode the wave of grief that’s thundering. So I shut it off and I read the damn book and I act like it’s all fine.

We had trunk-or-treat at the preschool. So many adorable families; many with 2 sweet boys and 2 loving parents. Too many that should be a mirror of ours, not an excruciating reminder of what we’re missing. And yet. I awkwardly fumbled my way through conversations, wanting desperately to be friends with all these different parents and simultaneously just feeling so vulnerable and sad and alone. I know Pete would’ve smoothly struck up conversations with all of them. We’d have gone home having hit it off with at least 3 families, making future plans for summer BBQs or a playdate at the park. And instead I come off like this frigid bitch who’s too good for everyone, avoiding eye contact and rushing through social interactions, all because I don’t know how to fit in anymore or where I belong. And at my core, the only thing I can muster up feeling most of the time is I miss my f*cking husband.

I don’t want to talk too much about the house until everything is final. Which could be in… 4 days. I’m too afraid to jinx it. Too used to heartbreak this year to count on much of anything, to be honest. But our life will change drastically for the better if we become owners of this little log cabin in the woods next week as planned.

It’s been an especially rough few weeks. It’s becoming clearer each day that there is too much on my plate, that I’m wearing myself too thin. But I’m overwhelmed with guilt about how taking anything off means inevitably letting someone down. I’ve made commitments to two different jobs and massage school. And my commitment to my kids barely leaves room for even one of those things to begin with. I’m willing to make sacrifices and work my ass off for a few years to establish my life and get us in a good space. But what I have going on right now is just a step beyond that, into the territory where I’m overextended and spend most of my days feeling resentful and bitter toward what or whomever I’ve committed focusing on that day. My schedule right now doesn’t ever allow me to take a minute to breathe and process what the eff my life has become compared to what it was at the beginning of the year. I’m proud of what we’ve achieved and I know on paper we are absolutely killing it, but I am so scared of the crash that is inevitably coming when life finally slows down for us. If I don’t slow down and take this new life beat by beat, if I stifle the days by keeping them full to the brim, I’ll never actually heal. My gut tells me I have to drop some of what I’ve got going on if I am going to survive this. I started this year as a suburban work-from-home housewife less than 3 months postpartum, and I’m ending it a single widow in rural Vermont with multiple jobs out of the house. I don’t even recognize the woman I was at the beginning of 2022. And I’m scared that if I don’t stop and pause and do the therapy and sit with the feelings and engross myself in all of this, especially if I’m about to move into my very first home on my own, I’ll just never recognize myself ever again. That thought terrifies me too.