Floating up.

I feel like I am drowning...it's like a rope is tied around my ankle and it is attached to the bottom of a rough sea and yet I am just buoyant enough to keep afloat. A big wave will pass over me and submerge me entirely but I am just buoyant enough to pop up on the other side of the wave. Right now, I am fighting this frustrating sickness, on antibiotics, AND weaning. Oh geesh. Today, the wave caught me yet again (no doubt an effect of the sickness and weaning hormonal rollercoasters) and my kids reached down and pulled me back up. They held me up long enough to catch my breath once again. The mom in me will NOT let my kids have anything but a PERFECT childhood to the BEST of my ability NO MATTER WHAT and that is what drives me on a moment to moment basis. It's my overall arch that I have trouble with.

Today, in my despair about what I have been reduced to and what I have given up, I felt so hopeless. I find solace in the complete sacrifice that perfect parenting is yet I know that this will not ultimately keep me afloat. I will need to begin again from scratch, re-inventing myself yet again. Starting over again. And, I will have to be alone. No matter how I look at it, I will be alone. I will do it, alone. How can I be alone when I love to be in a crowd and crowds are easy to find? How can I be alone when I find comfort in fellow humans no matter who that might be. I am still feeling the effects of a warm hug from a spanish lady at a playground in Boston that me and the kids found ourselves at. Her cell number and offer of friendship saved in my cell phone. I feel the embrace of the nanny at the playground in CT that hugged me through my tears that wouldn't stay put and carry her number scrawled on a piece of paper in my wallet like an emergency contact to put on the many health forms I fill out. The cell phone number of yet another person at a random playground that offered friendship in a fleeting moment at the car window as I drove away. The business card of a beginner hairdresser with the promise of wet weather playdates at her house. None of these lifelines are what I need or what I seek, yet there they are, keeping me company. How can I fear being lonely? How can I be here, with the constant company of my parents and feel so lonely? How can I cuddle me two little loveys and be lonely for them? Feeling like I am not present enough for them?

I am reading Eat, Pray, Love and although I find it frustrating to "hear" this woman whining when she has unlimited financial resources, talent, and can flit around where she pleases having these experiences without having to drag her two children along or wonder how they will be affected while also wondering if love will ever find her while she mothers, smothers among the closed in walls of her home, I will admit that it gives me things to ponder on. She says that all you need to do is ask for your guru and they will appear. What I think about this is, I am not ready to hear what my guru has to say. Second, she points straight to me and says, "I, too, am trying to control my world to keep time from moving, to stay as far away from dying as possible, and can therefore not be present. Even as I control, it only proves how this world is beyond our control." Although I am paraphrasing, this is the lesson that I need to learn yet every ounce of my being will not allow this to be true. I CANNOT live from day to day. I CANNOT let the past die, CANNOT let the future present itself. I am NOT ok with my current predicament and constantly think I will, at any moment, wake from this dream and find myself no longer in this predicament. Pinch me.

Yet, here I am, making myself a cup of hot cocoa. Thinking how maybe winter is what I need. Maybe I will find comfort in winter. In the quiet of a snowfall, glowing fire's embrace, cradled by a home, let the wind whistle outside. Here I am, popping back up after the wave has passed, catching a breath. I cannot help but hope, it is the human condition. It also seems to relate to the seasons. Being back in the land of seasons, I remember the feeling of perpetually being driven forward, towards the next season. Thinking that something better is just around the corner.