Eight hours or so after Kendrick took this pre-ceremony photo, just so you’re aware, I strongly resembled a sweaty, be-flip-flopped cavewoman, thanks to the ocean air and my penchant for bounce-dancing to Carly Rae Jepsen songs.
But at the moment you see pictured here, I felt perfectly calm. Happy. Breezy, even.
Here’s the truth: lately, I’ve been having a little trouble getting my emotions under control. I feel silly for even saying that, considering all of the things that should make me feel not just happy, but great (family, job, home, pretty weather, caprese pasta in my refrigerator right this very moment). But even so: I can’t shake the anxiety that is still – still – keeping me up at night. All night, sometimes. Even in the daytime, one second I’ll be happy and rushing and doing…and then the next second it feels like there’s something impossibly large sitting on my chest, making it difficult to even breathe.
Why? Maybe the answer is as simple as the fact that things are just very busy right now, and busy is both something I love to be and something that sticks in my head, taking up all the room that I might want to use for small things like “sleep” or the ability to chill out for long enough to have a non goal-oriented conversation with the man I married. I’m also scared that all that busy will go away, and then I’ll be back where I used to be: adrift and not knowing what’s next or how I’ll get there. Rational? Maybe not. But real.
Also: busy is good, of course it is, but the busier things are the more juggling you have to do, and one of the things you have to juggle is your child (who takes him when and where and what time is the doctor’s appointment and how do I spend five extra minutes watching that sweet, excited face figure out “up” versus “down” and still make my train?), and that is both a reality of being a working parent and a shot straight in the heart. It just is. It is okay; I really do know that…but that doesn’t mean that it’s not something that yanks me out of sleep nearly every night just so that I can tiptoe into my son’s room and kiss his head one more time.
Is it okay to take a moment away to be with your husband – just the two of you – and kiss and dance and stay out too late like you did when you first met? Of course it is. It’s not just okay; it’s necessary. But still: sometimes my knowledge that it’s okay to work, it’s okay to spend time alone with my husband, it’s okay to put down the Must List and watch The Bachelorette just because I want to crashes up in my head against other things, like just how fast the days and weeks are moving and how very much I’d like this summer to go on forever.
Like I said in this post:
Maybe you’ve noticed that I haven’t been talking much about personal stuff lately, and this is why, I suppose. I feel anxious, and then the anxiety gets in the way of my ability to be one hundred percent on my game at every single moment of every single day, and then I feel guilty for that, and then the guilt makes me more anxious. Whee! And all of it feels kind of silly when the truth is that it seems to stem from the fact that things are good, and I’m just scared that they won’t go on that way forever. So I was trying to skip whining about it and work it out on my own before ever mentioning it here.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t appear to be working. Because another thing I feel anxious about is that I’ve been avoiding talking about what’s going on in my head, and I don’t like doing that. And that’s one small thing I can fix, so fixing it is the plan.
This is a good start, I think.
