Stinker Status

I have dismissed my sleep meds due to the crazy dreams that accompany them.  Either I am meeting Stephen King at a book signing and taking pics with him like we're long lost friends or I am in the middle of an apocalypse type event, separated from everyone I know and love, and being raped by two men in an elevator.


So now that I have stopped taking the sleep meds, I am up.  All the time. My comments?  Insomnia rots your mind.  I doubt I could add two numbers together at gunpoint.  I am moody and difficult to be around.  I would not fare well in an apocalypse type event.  Someone would shoot me out of simple annoyance.


Getting through work last week was a nightmare.  Smiles in the hallway, but tears welling up at the slightest provocation behind my closed door.  It is only looking back at the last ten days or so, that I can see there were two things going on:  my bitter disappointment that the pain didn't leave with Santa and the conflicted emotions that my other child's birthday brought with it.


You see, I soldiered along through the holidays, hunkered down, concentrating on getting through...certain relief would begin somewhere around the 3rd of January.  When I still felt like crap days past that, I was discouraged and angry.  What good is keeping on, keeping on, if every time you throw the curtain back, there's a hefty brick wall smiling back at you.  Effin grief.


Jacob's birthday that I was actually looking forward to, at first, ended up being one of those weird contradictions where part of me was happy for my son and the other part miserable and resentful that Cory would never get any older, ever.


I also figured why Cory's symptoms showed most at home.  She often seemed fine or nearly fine around others- what was the deal?


Well, let me share this.  On Jacob's birthday, I ran into one of Cory's friend's fathers who'd we'd known since the girls started kindergarten.  I could not bear to worry or trouble this kind man, so I turned it up full volume.  I answered that I was doing well; I smiled big and pretty; I met his eyes and held them.  Basically, I gave it all I had to feign the appearance of life, vitality, and good cheer.  Three minutes out of his sight, that mask melted right off my face, and good riddance to that dirty rotten lie.  How in the world can anyone be expected to do that crap all day long?  Exhausting.


Fast forward a few hours, and observe the authentic Nick at Jake's birthday dinner.  In front of these people who will love her even if she is a stinker, she is just that:  a stinker.  She smiles seldom.  She is disengaged a great deal of the time.  She expresses love awkwardly, and retreats often.  She doesn't worry about covering up her pain for appearance sake, she instead is comfortable enough to- what is the expression- just "let it all hang out".


I don't know if you see the similarities, but I do.  We let out our biggest feelings in our safest places and with our safest people.