I had to ask myself why I felt so frazzled today. I agreed that it was late when I fell asleep and I'm trying to recall how I slept at night in the first place. But already in denial of last night I’m back to now and analyzing what has me feeling like I’m going to puke, thick in the throat, tight in the chest all day long.
My thinking has been unclear and all over the place since I woke up this morning. From the time I opened my eyes and tried to go back to sleep because I could spare twenty nine more minutes, I could not. I could not drift back into that safe sleepy place. I was awake, I fought it. I laid in the bed fighting it and it all began.
I had turned off the fan in the room because of the chill when the alarm went off. It was silent. There was no noise in my house at 7:42 in the morning. It hit me in the pit of my stomach like pellets, each weighed with its own burden to bear. Each tiny footstep by each child was missing. Running or creeping through the house. Each laugh, faded. Doing their hair and laughing while you tell them a million times to eat their breakfast while they hold up the spoon full of fruit loops to their mouth and the milk drips off completely while they stare at SpongeBob and Patrick making a mockery of The Dirty Bubble while we wait on the school bus.
I cried. I missed normal this morning. I miss my normal more it seems today. But I went to work and I pretended all day long that I was purposeful and inclined to get things done….but I do feel it was a failed attempt. Sitting here now I agree with myself that I should go back to work and do some work, there is a lot of work to be done and work is good. I’m trying hard now to change the subject just because the mere mention of just a few things that cross a woman’s mind causes me to burst into tears.
The babies little leg. Her little foot. Her toes and how they tasted so sweet when I pretended to eat her foot. That spot on her neck where no matter what she would burst into laughter in the same shrilling beautiful bee bah voice that crackles from heaven.
You know I had my head back, eyes closed, and was just typing and crying so hard that Marley just lept into my lap and he pushed into me to hug me and I held him until it passed. Until I actually burst into laughter. Now he sits by my side and is irritated at the laptop for it seems to be the reason for my sadness. Dogs are smart. My sweet Marley. My sweet distraction.
So I guess I figured out the reason for my distress. But I can feel my body trying to teach my mind a lesson. Release. I pretend all the time that everything is fine. I walk around denying the pain of my reality. The complete reality that I could go on for pages about each child. It’s the same but different every time. The real real ness that I could go on about my parents. The real real ness that I could go on; without any of them.
Homer. Do they remember screaming HOMER from the backseat of the car every time we pulled onto 111A? Building dreams with Jenga blocks and dominos and cars? Do they remember my parents? Will they remember me? Making cupcakes in the cupcake maker and helping me clean the kitchen floor when it got cleaned! Folding clothes together, and swinging. Going to the park. Sleeping beside me. Singing “you are my sunshine” with me. Will someone just remind them of me for me?
Shut up Ashley. Shake it off girl. You’re strong and you’re smart and you’re beautiful. But you’re completely alone. No your not. Yes I am. No your not. Every person I loved is not here, every person that made me, completed me, and inspired me- They are all not here. Your right they are not here. So we should cry? Yes.
No, I’m not crazy. I know that’s what some of you have pushed for and you are probably thinking AWESOME!!! Reading that last little part there, but truth is you have strengthened me, and I thank you. The truth is times are tough for everyone.
I think I talk to myself like my mother would talk to me. And like my father on some issues. I just miss them so terribly. I want to talk to them. One of them. Either of them.
But really really though. These are completely normal feelings for any mother that has lost her children. And her parents. Sadness is normal. Sadness is better than anger. Though being angry is easier than being sad. People suffer everyday and you need to go back to work right now and label those files with the label maker thingy you wanted so badly.
New idea: bubble bath. Bubble baths are always the key to release. You get to replace bubbles, hundreds of them. Watch the new bubbles fill with dreams and memories. They swell up and bounce and slide and twirl. Bubbles are transparent but magically get to explode like northern lights dancing inside them from the soap. I get immersed in the way the colors smash into each other like the gases on the history channel before the big bang theory. I admire those twenty good big bubbles. They turn into thousands of little bubbles that seem to have stolen just one color from the rainbow and shines. Soaking into you so that tomorrow when the PEOPLE who feel the need to, and set have plans into motion to pop your bubbles, come at you, you will have replenished each and every one of those AWESOME FREAKING BUBBLES they have popped in the past. I have a special memory bank of bubbles that no one else in the whole world even knows about. Till now, but good luck finding it.
Yes. Bubbles. Bubbles go good with tears in the bathtub. I honestly feel my bubbles and my tears go hand in hand. Their creation is both precious and delicate.
I feel like before now in my life I would have suffocated Chris and looked to him to make me better. I’m so glad I realize that I have only myself to look to for happiness and only myself to blame for unhappiness. I could not ever expect Chris to magically fix my problems, though he is squarely the reason it’s tolerable to sleep at night, he cannot be anything but himself. He cannot read my mind. He cannot help that all my past experiences have led me to react to the situations everyday the way I do. He is my help through this if I let him be. So I chose not to burden him with all of this sadness. He is so very good to me. He holds me close; wrapping our feet together and tucking them under the safeness of our blanket. He is my rock on those nights when the tears sneak out of my bathtub and follow me to bed to dance down my nose and make distraught drops on my pillow.
But tonight I just want to deal with all of this alone. Release all of the pain that has mounted up inside my body and lurks in every breath. I want to lay in my bed and cry myself to sleep screaming their names into my pillow. I need to. I learned when I lost my parents that if you don’t release the pain sometimes, you go crazy. If you don’t let it out and allow yourself to painfully remember those oh so sweetly decadent memories that flood your being with pure goodness…..you end up crying over everything including spilt milk. I think my body is trying to tell me today that its time. I want to smell their hair so badly my pours are open and aching to just brush against the sweetness of the air they are breathing. I have to do this alone and I would never expect another to share in this moment or feel they need to comfort me, for in reality there is no comfort.
I feel better after my little talk with myself.
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