on the struggle bus
Hey gang… I’m totally free-flowing it today, because I have so much going on in my brain I’m not really sure how to organize it all. So I’m just going to start writing, dump it all here, and see what happens.
I’ve been struggling lately. In about a million different ways.
My mom is really, really not doing well. She finally made it from Johns Hopkins to a rehab hospital closer to home, but absolutely DID NOT want to be there and kept begging us to get her out. Within a few days she ended up at our local hospital, and has gone downhill ever since. She won’t eat, can’t move, and is wasting away to nothing. Like, she’s literally all bones and skin and bruises. It is SO very difficult to watch. What’s more difficult is that she’s coherent enough to say that she doesn’t want to die and wants to keep fighting, so there’s not much we can do but keep visiting and encouraging her to try to move (which she doesn’t) and eat (which she won’t).
When I’m bored and/or depressed, I usually clean and organize to stay busy. After a depressing visit with my mom, I went home and started cleaning up my attic, and I found a box of pictures that had ended up with me after my dad and stepmom died last year. I had grabbed them figuring I’d go through them and scan the ones that I wanted to keep. As I rifled through the box, the majority of it was pictures of my dad. Most of them were pictures I had never seen, but they spanned my whole life — all the different phases of weight, moustaches, and beards. “Businessman” Dad and “At home in the pond” Dad. “Fisherman” Dad and “Life of the Party” Dad.
Holy shit. My dad is dead. It hit me like a punch in the gut, and I realized just how much I’ve been pushing it down since I had to deal with my stepmom dying right after him and then my daughter dying a few weeks later. There were plenty of pictures of my stepmom in there, and quite a few of my sister, Shannon, who died at the very end of 2003, thrown in for good measure.
So… my dad is dead, and my stepmom is dead, and my sister is dead, and my daughter is dead, and my mom is dying. I mean, seriously. What the actual fuck???
Sticking with the death theme… I’ve been grieving Libs extra hard lately. We had Christmas, and then the one-year anniversary, and then the big Bingo event for her charity, and now, probably the worst of all, is dance competition season. Please don’t get me wrong — I freaking ADORE Libby’s dance family. But seeing all of the photos and videos of everyone — wondering which dances she would’ve been in, and which costumes she would’ve worn — it’s excruciating. The world is moving on without her, and it sucks so, so hard.
And lastly… graduation is coming up. My oldest, Max, is graduating from college and my middle, Grayson, is graduating from high school. I’m struggling because my role as a mom has changed drastically. I am no longer needed to be a domestic caretaker or provider. I am a single, middle-aged woman who has absolutely no idea what to do with herself.
Here’s my problem. I’m EXCITED about that. I’m excited that I have the chance to live my own life, explore who I am, figure myself out, clean up my OWN messes instead of everyone else’s. Being a mom today is freaking exhausting, y’all. I’m looking forward to rest. To a life reset.
So what is the problem? I FEEL GUILTY AS HELL THAT I’M EXCITED. It feels wrong — like if I allow myself to get excited about life’s possibilities, that I’m somehow betraying Libby. Because the only way that this re-start is happening is because she died. And I know that’s dumb, because I loved Libby more than life itself and I would happily spend the rest of my life momming if I could have her back for ONE MORE SECOND.
It’s obviously not even a question that if I had the choice of being on my own vs. having Libby back and spending eight more years running around to every dance competition under the sun, I would be the first person in line buying extra tights and bobby pins. But my daughter’s not coming back. I don’t get to make that choice. Those eight years, and the many, many years after that watching her pick a college, and find the love of her life, and having a family — they’re all gone.
So my brain knows that I shouldn’t feel guilty about looking forward to some self-discovery, but I still do. And it hurts.
Whew. That was not uplifting at ALL. Sorry, peeps. Just keeping it real. Life is HARD. I’m sure it will get better eventually, right? RIGHT????? Just keep putting one foot in front of the other.
