He has asked so many questions that don’t have answers and I’m just so tired. I ask him to help his brother. I say, “He’s going to get hurt, can you help him?”
“Why will he get hurt?”
I answer through gritted teeth, “He just will! Just help him!” Then he sighs and his big blue eyes look sad and I wish I could find the strength for more patience and less surprising anger.
When I walk into my room to get dressed, I pass the crumpled bed and want to get in it. I want to curl up on my side and cry. I’m not sure why, but I want to do it. I start to walk that way and then I see her, the me in my mind’s eye, on her side in the bed where I am not. She looks like she’s repeating history. She is carrying this disease and she thinks she isn’t and then sometimes she thinks she is this disease. She is me and I am her and she is them and she is not.
She is so afraid that she’s given it to them.
I know that if I were to walk in and find her curled there, I’d think she should get up. I’d think she should shake it off. It’s not her fault she’s there, but she needs to get up, I’d say. Then I’d wonder if some of it is her fault, because I know memories of ridiculous choices can flood in and bring with them the funk, curling her up.
So I get dressed. I wash my face of yesterday’s make-up and I put one foot in front of the other to make sure that I’m not her or them or her past. I fight it because I know that when I do, it gets a little better.
I fake it sometimes, but strangely, most of the time I’m truly reveling in the buried joy. The miraculous happiness that comes through the eyes of my boys. We make a hideout in a closet and they are thrilled with their flashlights in the dark. I well up with joy because they are who they are and I believe we can change this. Even if it doesn’t stop, it can be lighter, it can get better. Even if they feel it, they can learn that it doesn’t define them. I will tell them. They can learn from the truths we speak over them…
You are lovely. You are worthy. You are good. Just exactly as you are. This heavy weight of sadness, it can never be who you are.
I can say it with words from my mouth, and I can say it by walking away from the bed, uncurled and dressed.
“Can we go to the park?”
He asks this carefully, and I say yes even though I don’t want to say yes. I put one foot in front of the other and he rides with training wheels beside me. He says, “You’re great, Mom.” Then through my tightening throat where my heart wells up with this mercy, I say, “So are you, little man.”
“I know,” he says.
I laugh with unleashed joy and I think, please keep knowing…please keep knowing…please…
We are sometimes sadness, but mostly we are grace.
{This post was originally published on The Extraordinary Ordinary. What I knew was that I needed to keep going, for my kids and for myself. What I had not yet realized was that there is no shame in needing help in order to keep going. Not long after the publishing of this post, I quit self-medicating with alcohol, I started taking medication for depression, and I went to a whole lot of counseling. Passing the bed got easier, and I am so grateful for the help, sobriety, and the peace and joy that exists in surrender.}
