Wouldn’t it be nice if people came with mood indicators? It could be like those color-changing mood rings, only on our foreheads, broadcast for the world to see. Red could mean, “Kids, don’t you dare come near me right now!”. Green would be “Calm, centered Mommy ready to take on the world.” Mine probably wouldn’t be green very often. Black would be how I often feel lately.
For some reason this last week or two has been really difficult for me. I haven’t been thinking about Eric any more often (I don’t really think that’s possible), but those thoughts have been making me sadder than they did the week before. I’m really actively missing him. I’ve cried a few times this week and hadn’t done that in weeks. This doesn’t really upset me, but I have been wondering why now? Nothing significant has changed. We are approaching 6 months without him, but that doesn’t change anything, it’s just time.
I feel badly for the people in my life who unwittingly walk into my mood. Most of the time I put a brave face on things. Someone commented the other night that I’m always smiling. I can temporarily put my feelings away at work. I put them away during social interactions too, for the most part, because I don’t know how to bring them out. It’s hard for the other person and for me. Then my husband tells me he’d like to start running again and I’m a crying mess. Or my kids do something they’ve done a million times before, only this time I really fly off the handle.
If I only I had an early warning system, we all might feel a little safer. I could let the kids and my husband know they were swimming in dangerous waters when they came around me. The kids might be too little even for the traffic light forehead system, but it could help my husband at least. He has pretty good intuition for a guy, the other night when I came home after work with the kids; he had dinner on the stove and sent me away until bedtime. He could tell I was nearing my breaking point. I REALLY appreciated that. But sometimes I’m so good at hiding how I feel, even from him, that there’s no way for him to know.
I don’t know why I have such a hard time showing emotion, but I do. I hate crying in front of others. I can remember my mother telling me “Never let them see that they’ve hurt you” in response to catty teenage girls, or boyfriends who broke up with me. That shouldn’t translate into never let you’re loved ones know you’re in pain though. If I can’t do that, how can I expect them to help me?
Maybe the reason I need this blog is not just lack of time to grieve, but lack of ability to grieve, at least in front of anyone else.
I’m going to work on letting the people in my life into my emotional life a little bit more. In the meantime I may have come up with a forehead sparing warning system. Yesterday I had my toenails painted black.
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