How are you?
The people I can deliver full and complete answers to this question are not the ones I have time to give full and complete answers to.
Last night Gavin unexpectedly threw a toddler-level tantrum over finding out it wasn't his night for snuggles. That was all. And he FREAKED and it scared me because he never loses it like that but he was throwing his pillows on the ground and when he realized the consequences of having no more time to read, he hit himself in the head with a closed fist and I tried to hold him to keep my heart from breaking but it didn't work. My heart cracked open like a raw egg and hurt dripped down everywhere. He hurt and all I could do was hold him but I was so much better at it with him than I ever was with Magnus. I didn't feel triggered or frustrated, just terribly sad and like I wanted to heal all his cracks with love.
What will I do one day when someone hurts him and he won't let me hold him? All the seams in my sewn-up places in my soul will surely separate and I will fly apart. How can the pain be so exquisitely sharp as to rip all semblance of certainty away? He was the easy one, the one I don't worry about. I better not start worrying about him. Serendipity must ferry him through. He's too sweet for a world to break down. I need the world to be good to him.
How are you?
And there are more answers too.
The answers where a student came into my room and instead of getting a tissue accidentally pulled a question from the sex ed question box and I laughed so hard I choked when he told me and then his friend made him laugh so hard he snorted yogurt through his nose such that he not only choked but bled.
"Kyler made me laugh so hard I bled out my nose!"
These two boys are the very best of friends, lifelong and deep friends, and it's just goodness to enjoy them together every day. Their friendship is so good that I miss Meghann. She would have loved these boys. Yesterday in class, one member of this best-friend duo talked about running a race with a man's face on his t-shirt. The man had died in his home of a sudden heart attack while only in his thirties. He was found dead having fallen asleep and died of a heart attack. His dog was laying with him. I could hardly breath and have no idea how I didn't bawl through the whole rest of class. But I composed myself and taught.
The same student caught me crying in my class earlier this year. I never told him why. I think about telling him why I was crying that day and the thought makes me cry so I don't. I want to be happy at work.
But it's hard when I dreamt of Meghann last night and a few times this month and I don't know why it's not exactly getting easier dealing with my grief. It's manageable. But no matter how much more acceptably I function on any given day, it doesn't make it over. She is still gone. It still hurts and feels wrong, like heavy metal ball bearings, gun metal gray, lost, rolling cold across my dreams. I wake up sweating and can't sleep. I'd take having her back in the world even if she never talked to me again. This bargaining ...and crying get me nowhere.
But I don't want to be dramatic. So I don't tell you when you ask how I'm doing.
I am fine and there are snipsnap, paper scrap pieces of what fine means.
I exercise and make healthy meals. Spaghetti squash with shrimp and goat cheese and fresh orange cherry tomatoes. Smoothies. Good. Food.
I often sleep through the night and clean my house and play piano and make plans and some of them even pan out.
I burry my fingertips in my puppy's fur in the morning and kiss her nose and the dogs climb all over me and wiggle their excitement. There is so much good in my life that I sop up like sauce at the end of a plate when you've known hunger, every drop. Taste it.
One evening this week, the kids read all evening quietly. I've raised readers. Successful students. And I cleaned the kitchen and set up my life for the next day so that my morning went smoothly and I worked out and played piano, some songs I even played well. And I took the moments to appreciate the resonance of hammer on string, the harmonies and way notes sustained themselves in air. I sopped up those notes.
Rob and I have been belly laughing lately. There have been good new jokes and not all exclusively about the boys. There have been cat memes and flirty hip bumps.
How are you?
Fine.
And fine is full of pieces of me that float around. I think of clasping some pieces together on a clothes line, would it show my fine? I think it wouldn't, but the thought is another piece that is good. The art of mini clothes pins I could paint the colors of my thoughts, the idea that the words could be ordered and reordered until they were right.
There's loneliness sometimes. Didn't anyone tell you? Adulthood is lonely. It's being too busy to have real day-to-day friends and then feeling your heart break when you finally have a moment and everyone else is just as busy. Busy busy. I fucking hate that word.
And here I am. I can overschedule and have friends, or I can sop bread and feel heartstrings resonate and be lonely and trust that someday it will be different. I think it will. I really do.
Someday the plump cheeks of fits thrown will mist from my view, poof, gone! Then I'll have friends and boys turned grown men who visit. And the lonely will shift to when they fit into the nook of my shoulder, my arm wrapped around the cracks in their eggshell souls, holding them together. They'll not fly apart. I'll miss them because they'll have flown. But then I'll have friends and we won't be too busy. The lonely will just shift. Sad and lonely and joyful and reflective and sweet and connected are all snippets that will attach to new days in new ways. They'll all still check their boxes of attendance in life though.
How are you?
Fine. So...so, fine.
The people I can deliver full and complete answers to this question are not the ones I have time to give full and complete answers to.
Last night Gavin unexpectedly threw a toddler-level tantrum over finding out it wasn't his night for snuggles. That was all. And he FREAKED and it scared me because he never loses it like that but he was throwing his pillows on the ground and when he realized the consequences of having no more time to read, he hit himself in the head with a closed fist and I tried to hold him to keep my heart from breaking but it didn't work. My heart cracked open like a raw egg and hurt dripped down everywhere. He hurt and all I could do was hold him but I was so much better at it with him than I ever was with Magnus. I didn't feel triggered or frustrated, just terribly sad and like I wanted to heal all his cracks with love.
What will I do one day when someone hurts him and he won't let me hold him? All the seams in my sewn-up places in my soul will surely separate and I will fly apart. How can the pain be so exquisitely sharp as to rip all semblance of certainty away? He was the easy one, the one I don't worry about. I better not start worrying about him. Serendipity must ferry him through. He's too sweet for a world to break down. I need the world to be good to him.
How are you?
And there are more answers too.
The answers where a student came into my room and instead of getting a tissue accidentally pulled a question from the sex ed question box and I laughed so hard I choked when he told me and then his friend made him laugh so hard he snorted yogurt through his nose such that he not only choked but bled.
"Kyler made me laugh so hard I bled out my nose!"
These two boys are the very best of friends, lifelong and deep friends, and it's just goodness to enjoy them together every day. Their friendship is so good that I miss Meghann. She would have loved these boys. Yesterday in class, one member of this best-friend duo talked about running a race with a man's face on his t-shirt. The man had died in his home of a sudden heart attack while only in his thirties. He was found dead having fallen asleep and died of a heart attack. His dog was laying with him. I could hardly breath and have no idea how I didn't bawl through the whole rest of class. But I composed myself and taught.
The same student caught me crying in my class earlier this year. I never told him why. I think about telling him why I was crying that day and the thought makes me cry so I don't. I want to be happy at work.
But it's hard when I dreamt of Meghann last night and a few times this month and I don't know why it's not exactly getting easier dealing with my grief. It's manageable. But no matter how much more acceptably I function on any given day, it doesn't make it over. She is still gone. It still hurts and feels wrong, like heavy metal ball bearings, gun metal gray, lost, rolling cold across my dreams. I wake up sweating and can't sleep. I'd take having her back in the world even if she never talked to me again. This bargaining ...and crying get me nowhere.
But I don't want to be dramatic. So I don't tell you when you ask how I'm doing.
I am fine and there are snipsnap, paper scrap pieces of what fine means.
I exercise and make healthy meals. Spaghetti squash with shrimp and goat cheese and fresh orange cherry tomatoes. Smoothies. Good. Food.
I often sleep through the night and clean my house and play piano and make plans and some of them even pan out.
I burry my fingertips in my puppy's fur in the morning and kiss her nose and the dogs climb all over me and wiggle their excitement. There is so much good in my life that I sop up like sauce at the end of a plate when you've known hunger, every drop. Taste it.
One evening this week, the kids read all evening quietly. I've raised readers. Successful students. And I cleaned the kitchen and set up my life for the next day so that my morning went smoothly and I worked out and played piano, some songs I even played well. And I took the moments to appreciate the resonance of hammer on string, the harmonies and way notes sustained themselves in air. I sopped up those notes.
Rob and I have been belly laughing lately. There have been good new jokes and not all exclusively about the boys. There have been cat memes and flirty hip bumps.
How are you?
Fine.
And fine is full of pieces of me that float around. I think of clasping some pieces together on a clothes line, would it show my fine? I think it wouldn't, but the thought is another piece that is good. The art of mini clothes pins I could paint the colors of my thoughts, the idea that the words could be ordered and reordered until they were right.
There's loneliness sometimes. Didn't anyone tell you? Adulthood is lonely. It's being too busy to have real day-to-day friends and then feeling your heart break when you finally have a moment and everyone else is just as busy. Busy busy. I fucking hate that word.
And here I am. I can overschedule and have friends, or I can sop bread and feel heartstrings resonate and be lonely and trust that someday it will be different. I think it will. I really do.
Someday the plump cheeks of fits thrown will mist from my view, poof, gone! Then I'll have friends and boys turned grown men who visit. And the lonely will shift to when they fit into the nook of my shoulder, my arm wrapped around the cracks in their eggshell souls, holding them together. They'll not fly apart. I'll miss them because they'll have flown. But then I'll have friends and we won't be too busy. The lonely will just shift. Sad and lonely and joyful and reflective and sweet and connected are all snippets that will attach to new days in new ways. They'll all still check their boxes of attendance in life though.
How are you?
Fine. So...so, fine.
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