The Lonely

I'm so tired of treading water.  The last five months have drug on to the point that I am at my wit's end. My house is wonderful, I have amazing children, a loving husband, great friends.......... But I can't seem to feel any of that right now.  What I do feel is a hole in my chest that won't heal.  I feel alone in a sea of people.  The sea around me moves and goes on about the business of life and I'm here, treading water.  I want the option of having someone else say prayers with the kids at bed time once in a while. The luxury of another grown up to direct the endless questions that come from my kids would be amazing right about now.  

    Mom guilt is making me feel terrible for wanting a break.  I'm using my go-to strategies for summer.   Thirty minutes of reading time per day-check, two math worksheets per day-check, chore chart with allowance incentives-check, planned outings-check, play dates-check,  all of that is easy.  It's not even the kids that I want a break from, it's the lonely.  The lonely.  The no one who doesn't watch TV with you, and you can't laugh with.  The lonely is why the noises in the night become my responsibility to check out.  The lonely took all the warm away and left cold feet and a cold heart in it's place.  It's the quiet after bed time, it's the noise that doesn't fill the room when I try to sleep.  It's the lonely.

     Sweetness is great, and he tries.  He has been moved to night shift. Night shift means one call around six thirty in the morning when he gets off work for a minute or two.  A call for the kids before bed, then I call before I go "to sleep" for a minute or two.  Talking on the phone has never been one of Brad's best skills, add to that people coming in and out of his office, radios calling him, or a yawn every other word and there just isn't a chance for much conversation.  

     I am stuck lying in the bed we made.  We left "home" right after we got married.  We fought like cats and dogs for the first few years we were married, while trying to figure out just what being married meant.  We  learned to depend on only each other.  There wasn't a mom, dad, brother, sister, or grandma with in a thousand miles, so we learned to hold on to one another.  I won't lie, learning that wasn't pleasant, but it was so good for our marriage in the long run.  The bed we made has become being the outsiders.  We aren't a part of either of our families the way we once were, and that is OK.  There is no way to remain that close once you leave- you can never go home again.  So home has become where ever my Sweetness is.  Where ever we have our kids and lay our heads is our home, except that's gone now too.  

      Brad keeps telling me we will look back on this separation and laugh, I know he is right.  I just can't see day break on the horizon when my head is slipping below the water.  I can do all the work, that's not a problem.  I can maintain the yard, rip out flower beds, clean the house, do all the chores that we used to share.  Work is not what I'm running from.  I lean harder on work when I'm sad.  I try harder to throw myself into physical exhaustion when the lonely is calling for me.  I will work out, shovel, rake, mow, edge, vacuum, mop, wash, and clean, my fingers to the bone to run from the lonely.  So my house is beautiful, but the lonely is always there waiting.  

     Hopefully we only have a few more months of this to get through.  Hopefully summer will be easier than I think and it will fly by.  Hopefully learning to live together the second time around will be a much happier experience,  hopefully the lonely will leave.  

Adrift

 Life for me has been full of "Well, never thought I'd have to ___________."   Sweetness has been gone since late January and my list of never thought I'd have to's is filling up as a result.  We are all learning the rhythm of his absence.  The excitement as his arrival day nears, the  quick as a blink time together, the dull ache after he leaves, and the variable tantrums that bridge the gap before he returns again.  We are all dealing in our own ways.  Thank goodness my Sweetness is strong for me when I need it, and I try my best to fake strength when I see him waiver.  

    Today I am prepping my own breakfast in bed, never thought I'd be doing that.  What I want for Mother's Day is to pout and be a bad sport because the man who promoted me from wife to mother isn't going to be here.  Tomorrow my kids want to treat me, so I'm helping them.  I want their memories of Mother's Day when Papa was gone to  feel like a success.  So my toaster is out, coffee is premade, the English muffin has already been cut.  The skillet is out and has been sprayed, eggs are on the lower shelf in the fridge.  They will make me an amazing scrambled egg on an English muffin and I will love it.  I will wish the coffee were hot and that I'd be waking up next to my husband, but this situation will have to do for now.  I want the day that is mine because I have children to be good for them, they have always been good for me, after-all.  

      I'm now the good and bad cop.  I think it's what I get for ever complaining that Brad was always the fun parent.  I now see that being the "fun one" is certainly not as easy or as fun as I once thought it was.  It takes a lot of energy to bring joy.  My husband is the king of joy in our family and I am scrambling  and struggling, trying to fill his size twelve empty shoes.  I didn't realize how much thought he  put in to surprising us and making the weekends seem fun. A lot of prep work goes in to turning seemingly ordinary days into life long memories. 

     The kids are dealing with Papa's absence in their own ways.  Their moods vary as much as my own from day to day.  By far, no matter how sad and selfish I am feeling I can still look outside of myself and see just how much  this affects the smallest TBC.  Tater is such a Papa's girl.  They have a bond that I just can't replace.  Since Papa left she lashes out at me, she is more emotional, and she argues with her brother more.  She just can't deal with her feelings.  I completely understand and I ride those same waves of emotional confusion with her.  

   Turner is my strong little man.  He misses Papa, but he shows it in different ways.  He locks the house up at night, he shuts down the TV's and lights, he tries to keep the grass mowed, he takes out the garbage.  He too is trying his best to fill those un-fillable shoes.  

   Our house is out of balance.  We are lonely, but we worry for Papa too.  Who is taking care of the husband I made into a father?   I hate the thought of him alone with no one to drive him nuts.  I hate that no one is smiling at him when he gets home.  We have our routine down pat.  We wake up together, I make his breakfast, I pack his lunch, he kisses me good bye and all is right with the world. I miss it.  Sweetness is such a big man, he gives so much.  He deserves to be taken care of and I just can't do it from a thousand miles away. 

      What I want for Mother's Day isn't cold coffee and stale toast, I want to get to be a wife again.  I want to cook for my husband.  I want to be irritated with his mess.  I want the TV too loud and the house to be a wreck because he is his own tornado.  I want him to get the kids all stirred up right before bedtime.  I want man size clothes to fill up the washing machine.  I want clods of dried clay in the carpet when he walks through the house in his work boots. I want to watch him mow the grass.  I want him to take the kids' side and let everyone stay up far past bedtime. I want the chance to take him for granted, but I promise I will never take him for granted again. 

     Four months is a long time. I hope it is long enough for the lesson God is trying to teach me.  I'm blessed to have friends who have adopted my family. We are with them for holidays.  They have hugged me when the tears I can't hold back roll down my cheeks.  They have my kids over to play. Their  husbands help Turner with baseball. They are our cheering section, support group, family, and my sanity.  If God is showing me that family can be found anywhere, I understand. If He is trying to make me appreciate my husband, I promise, I understand. I am scared it's patience He is trying to teach me...... He has brought me to this lesson before. I've always tried to hurry through it.  I'm scared of God's timing. I know I am supposed to trust in it, but I just don't know how to. Our life is so up in the air, I actually thought I was doing OK. No roots, no certainty, it was OK as long as it was the four of us. Now our anchor is gone and this ship is adrift. I miss my anchor. 

Trampolines and Earphones

Life has taken an odd swing at the Currier household in the past two weeks.  Brad went to work two weeks ago on a Monday morning, just like normal.  I dropped the kids at school and as I was headed to Crossfit Sweetness called me.  He said "I'm on my way home, and I'm being sent to work in Kentucky tomorrow."  A lovely twenty-four hour notice that my husband was moving to another state, and so goes the life of construction.
    I hate separation from my husband.  Even when we are arguing and bickering I need him physically close to me.  We are ten kids of messed up/co-dependent with each other, and that's just how I like it. In the past twelve years of marriage we have learned how to depend on each other.  There's no other family around for hundreds of miles so Sweetness, along with TNT, make up my entire family for ninety-seven percent of the year.
     We haven't seen each other in two weeks.  I have cried more in the past two weeks than I care to admit.  We've been separated when we move for a couple weeks before, but I always know when the separation will be over.  This is an open ended engagement.  He will stay in Kentucky until another job happens.  It's so hard to explain to folks with normal jobs, who've never moved farther than a stone's throw from their parents the how's and whys of this life when I don't know the answers myself.
       So, how has life changed?  On the outside it hasn't.  Our routines are the same, dinner still happens at six, I don't really have any added chores.  On the inside it's vastly different.  My children are more clingy to me than usual.  They need two parents and that need comes out as pulling at me in new ways.  My insides are a mess.  I'm sad, moody, and hopeless feeling.  But I have to keep my outside self on track and normal so the kids feel safe and secure.  That, my friend, is exhausting.
        I miss having no conversation with Brad, just sitting together and enjoying him playing with my hair.  I miss him bringing me a glass of wine on the weekends and making me sit down and relax.  I miss cooking his breakfast and his scratchy beard on my forehead for a goodbye kiss every morning.  It's all of our seemingly unimportant rituals that I'm missing most.  Some things you just can't replicate on the phone.
      I am thankful for Face time, it helps some what.  Sadly, Brad and I have never been good on the phone.  The conversations always feel forced and empty.  Just a recall of the days' happenings, no emotional connection.   I am hoping we become better at just talking to each other.  It seems like it would be so easy, we've been speaking to each other for fifteen years, surely we should have the hang of it by now?  I hope we come out of this better at listening, better at bearing our hearts to each other.  I hope my loneliness doesn't turn me bitter towards him.  This is just hard.
     I have awesome friends who have been so sweet and considerate.  With out them I probably would have lost my mind already.  I'm trying to make myself keep up with being social.  Go to lunch, go to church, have the kids' friends over.  But it all feels weird with out Sweetness.  He's been the only constant in my life for the past twelve years and now there is an empty space at the dinner table, in his chair, and in our bed.
     The kids have been fantastic.  God knew I couldn't handle much so He blessed me with resilient amazing little people.  They are pitching in, they give me hugs, they are putting on the bravest faces.  I'm trying to do the things that Sweetness does for them- be fun.  I'm not the fun parent.  I'm the parent that cleans up the fun when it's over, and that is fine with me.  Papa is always building fires and bringing home marshmallows to roast.  He's the one who knows what movies are playing, who is always wanting to take the kids to see something new.  I am always full of reasons to not sit outside when it's cold, and not wanting to stay out late for a movie.
    Today the kids and I having a low key day at home.  No friends over, nothing going on.  We went to church, had a nice lunch and are chilling out the rest of the day.  The problem with this is they want me as their constant companion.  There is no one to switch off with.  There is no Papa to sit outside and watch them do flips on the trampoline while I get dinner ready.  So I'm trying to give them the same amount of attention that they would usually get from two parents.  But here is my bad mom confession: listening to them yell, argue, laugh, and scream constantly for two weeks grates my nerves.  I have never been able to zone out when noise is involved.  I hear and process every word of it.  After my daily quota is met I just can't handle anymore talking and noise.  Today on our "relaxing day at home I did the best I could.  I went and sat with them outside to bear witness to a game they have made up on the trampoline.  But I couldn't take anymore unending noise.  So, I plugged in my headphones and listened to music so I couldn't hear them.  I watched them, with out tuning them out, but I had to not hear them for a little while.
     I'm not sure if other mothers have to "not hear" their children for a little while or not?  I'm just trying to come up with ways to get through these next few weeks.  Maybe headphones and trampoline time are a great combination for us for in this situation.  I'm trying to look at my children and let them feel my love through my gaze, but I need moments where the music is louder than my thoughts and their voices.   I pray I'm not messing this up.  We are all praying daily for a job to start up here so Papa can come home.  So he can sit outside and watch the kids bounce.  So our dinner table won't have a big empty space.  So he can play with my hair and I can feel his nearness.  So there isn't an empty spot in every day and in all of our hearts.