I couldn’t place it. The dull ache. The lack of motivation. The want to just lay in silence. The distance I could feel myself creating, but kept creating anyways. The irritable feeling. The inability to sleep. It just hung there, heavy.
I sat in the corner of the couch, gazing at my sweet boy with his long and curly hair. When like a hammer to my chest it hit me. I jumped up fast enough for him to notice my shock.
I grabbed a book from the shelf and sat back down in my corner. I turned the page only once before tears began to fall, like silent stinging feelings.
“Mommy are you okay?”
I hadn’t looked at the date itself for several days. Maybe on purpose. Maybe knowing in my subconscious that I shouldn’t. Maybe just because I didn’t. I’m not sure.
This one had never felt big. It had felt long. It felt boring. It felt annoying. In the grand scheme I had always assigned it to be the least traumatic of the first big three.
Until tonight.
Tonight it took away my breath. It brought me everything I never allowed myself to feel in one fell swoop. My dismissal of its magnitude has caught up to me.
This was the one I hid. The one I carried silently by myself. This was when I tried harder to protect everyone else than myself.
My Caring Bridge post from the day I finally opened up begins:
“John 13:7
Jesus replied, You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.
Now that things have been confirmed it is time to share our secret. I have known since Friday that this is the path we would take, but until all labs were back I chose not to worry anyone with the news.“
Healing is funny the way it works.
In layers.
I’ve slowly pulled off layers, for years now. I spent the first couple of years keeping my suppressed feelings as deep down in the volcano as I could. Pulling the layers back slowly, like you’d do with a bandaid to avoid the shocking pain. You know, conceal, don’t feel.
I decided that this past year, I could no longer fight the feelings I had. They were coming whether I was ready or not, like Charlie’s blood on warfarin, they poured right out.
At the end of November, we ended up in the hospital again, right after Thanksgiving, right before the anniversary of his 2nd open heart surgery.
I was okay. He was okay. The work was working.
The work is working.
“No,” I replied gently.
“Mommy stop,” his quivering little mouth muttered. “Why are you looking at it?”
“Because by looking at this, I can process the feelings I’m having. When you process them, it gives them less power.”
I’m only sorry, for both of us, that I didn’t understand that sooner.
#iwearredforcharlie 