I'm a bit of an emotional wreck right now. I'm feeling very sad and emotional, almost on the verge of an anxiety or panic attack or complete meltdown. My brain won't shut down and my body hurts. I want to cry. But because I'm sitting in my office, I won't allow myself that luxury. I don't want to be here but I don't feel like I can leave. Usually putting things down in words helps but today I can't find the words. They are, like me, lost and adrift.
I wrote the above paragraph midday on Wednesday. It is now Sunday night. It's been that kind of week. When days and weeks go bad like that, our natural inclination is to figure out why. I'm not sure it really helps to know why but that doesn't stop us from trying to find that answer anyway. I had people ask me if I thought it was fallout/aftermath from the race last week. My gut reaction is no. I mean, maybe that was a small part of it but I think the more likely answer is emotional stress.
You see, on Tuesday night I found out that a girl - woman now - that I had grown up with had passed away. More than a year ago, in fact. November 29, 2013. And it hit me like a ton of bricks. I couldn't stop thinking about it over the next couple of days. And nights, as Sue showed up in my dreams that night and the next. I was in elementary school when Sue and her family moved in across the street. Although she was a little more than a year older than I, we became close friends and spent hours playing together, especially during the summers.
As often happens, after graduating high school and college, our lives took us in different directions. Since our parents still lived across the street from each other, we would still see each other from time to time, when we were both visiting at the same time. Eventually, though, her parents sold their house in the old neighborhood and moved to Missouri while mine sold theirs and moved to a condo in a nearby community. I would occasionally get updates on her from my mom, who kept in touch with her mom. I think it was at my wedding in 1998 that I heard she'd been diagnosed with breast cancer the year before.
A few years ago, we reconnected on Facebook. I learned that she'd gotten married again and had a son who was just a little younger than my son. She also had a daughter from her first marriage. I also found out that her cancer had come back but she was fighting on, in typical Sue fashion. We weren't in constant contact, by any means, but we kept in touch via our walls from time to time. I knew when she started chemo again and that she was having problems with her feet because of it. Yet I somehow missed when the end was near for her, even though I had shared something about cancer and tagged her in it on November 25 or 26 that year, never knowing that she lost her battle only a couple of days later.
I didn't understand how I didn't know this. It seems like something I should have known. I couldn't get it out of my head. I couldn't stop thinking about her son, losing his mother at such a young and vulnerable age. Which made me think of my son and hold him close. She left behind a daughter, a stepdaughter, a husband, a father, brothers, nieces and nephews. She was my age and she's gone, way too soon. It made me think of my sister's recent ovarian cancer diagnosis and the fear of losing someone so near and dear to me. All in all, I felt like I'd been sucker punched and hit with an emotional ton of bricks.
Consequently, I hurt. I hurt physically and I hurt emotionally. I couldn't seem to get it together. I rank days by whether or not I need to take pain medication. Good days involve no pain meds. Bad days are ranked by the number of pain pills I end up having to take. A bad day involves two or more pain pills. Thursday and Saturday were both three pain pill days. Saturday also got two muscle relaxers, marking it as a Really Bad Day. Nothing really seemed to help yesterday, especially with my head and neck. Today has been better as I've managed to not take any pain meds. Not because there was no pain but because I didn't have any where to be and I decided I could get through without. Although I'm not sure I'll actually be able to sleep if I don't give in and take one. My left hip and leg are really hurting and the peripheral neuropathy in my right foot has decided to start zinging me.
I am trying to dig my way out of the hole I feel like I've been in. To balance the emotional low of the beginning of the week, there is the emotional high of my great-nephew's birth on Friday night. We have been anxiously awaiting his arrival and there's pure joy in having him here at last. Even better is the fact that my nephew cared enough to FaceTime me on Saturday from the hospital so that I could get a good look at him, count his fingers and toes, and feel like I was a part of things even though I'm 1800 miles away. Plans were also made for me to visit in-person in April so I can cuddle him myself. Hopefully, having that plus the frequent baby pictures that have been promised to look forward to will help at least a little with the emotional end of things.
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