It's been a tough month around here. There's been drama. And I have felt a heaviness. The initial freedom of casting off from the moorings has given way to a different sort of weight. A weight of all the responsibility without breaks: Single Motherhood. Maybe even a little depression. And a good dose of ugliness on the part of certain people, including, sometimes, myself.
Admittedly, I've also hit busyness. Not "business." No, busy-ness; the kind of "busy" that doesn't stop. It's like, "The holidays are over, now get back to the insane-busy schedule of having four children." Since the family kinda fell apart just before the holidays, nothing was "normal." But I suddenly realized last night that we only have one unscheduled night a week now--and even that's about to go away, once the spring sports hit. I guess that's "normal." But I'm hating normal. I'm hankering for an early midlife crisis (Hey, I'm only 34, so I've been informed it's "too early" for a real one!) where I don't run the suburban rat race.
So as the busyness has increased, and people observe that we appear to be "back to normal," I'm again encountering the dreaded "How are you?" question. But I, frankly, feel a little "stuck." Elizabeth Corcoran posted an essay about not knowing how to answer the question, "How are you?" and I found I resonated with her thoughts. In my comments, I mentioned that what I really feel like saying is something like,
"Well, everything looks OK on the outside, but it's not. So, I'd hate to say, 'Great!' Because I'm not! But I can't very well say, 'Well, I'm past that stage where I literally couldn't sleep at night; where I was on the verge of panic attacks; where I couldn't see a road ahead; where I couldn't feel the sunshine. Yeah. I'm a bit past all that now, most days, at least. Now, I'm pretty much in a phase called--'After all that, but before anything else.' That's how I am."
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