How Hard It Is

I've been rocking it as an over-compensating, abandoned, soon-to-be-divorced, lesbian mom.  My introverted self has been constantly busy, and when I'm busy I'm happy.  This week brought a sinus infection and terrible allergies with a tightness in my chest, and it was time to slow down.  I wasn't worried about mother's day, because it's never been a huge deal to me.  But today with no fun plans (but rather, run, work, paint if energy remains), I feel a deep sadness for what I've lost.

There's a go-getum-girl school of divorce that says the way to get over your lost relationship is to get out into the world, and I do think it's good for me to be busy, but I think that school of thought conflates the period of time after mourning with the action people take at that time.  So right now, I can take all the actions of a person not in mourning, but I'll still feel the sadness.  And it sucks.  But it's an appropriate kind of sadness that leads to emotional health. Kind of like the way exercise hurts and leads to physical health.

I've also become the Cassandra of struggling and just-okay marriages.  I just want to scream: "if you want to remain married, you aren't trying hard enough! Your marriage is struggling and you can't find two hours to spend alone with your spouse, you've got to be kidding me!" Nobody hears that person, I didn't listen to that person, until it's too late.

But despite all that there is my wonderful little girl, who got me a pink toothbrush for mother's day, who said: "If you miss me and feel sad, just look at the flowers grandmom and I got you." I'm sad, but lucky.