When I was dependent on hurting people in order to not hurt my children, when I was too heartbroken to turn away comfort no matter the form, I only once cried my real cry of how not-right it all was. It was a moment of not being able to lie anymore, but it didn't matter because the crying made me inaudible.
I knew that I would cry when it was over. I would cry when it was right again, when my life, my kids' lives, were finally safe, okay, standard and acceptable, a happy normal (where the norm here is taken from my personal ethics standards across my lifetime). When it was okay, then I would think of how wrong it had all been. I would feel the contrast in my bones. I would bawl. I felt it coming.
I expected those tears to come at the wedding. I was a little horrified at how happy I look in all the pictures. No recognition at all of the compost in which this flower grew?
Instead, the crying came this Monday morning, this plain, ordinary Monday with nothing to mark it as different from anything else. We had a simple weekend, a sick kid to tend, first day of Sunday School, a family bike ride, crepes for supper. Then everyone off to school or where else they belong on this day, not with any first day jitters because it's just routine now.
Just routine now. In retrospect, why did I expect the tears to appear on anything other than a plain, ordinary Monday, a Monday with nothing to mark it as different from any other day?
May life go on, plain and ordinary, for all of us.
I knew that I would cry when it was over. I would cry when it was right again, when my life, my kids' lives, were finally safe, okay, standard and acceptable, a happy normal (where the norm here is taken from my personal ethics standards across my lifetime). When it was okay, then I would think of how wrong it had all been. I would feel the contrast in my bones. I would bawl. I felt it coming.
I expected those tears to come at the wedding. I was a little horrified at how happy I look in all the pictures. No recognition at all of the compost in which this flower grew?
Instead, the crying came this Monday morning, this plain, ordinary Monday with nothing to mark it as different from anything else. We had a simple weekend, a sick kid to tend, first day of Sunday School, a family bike ride, crepes for supper. Then everyone off to school or where else they belong on this day, not with any first day jitters because it's just routine now.
Just routine now. In retrospect, why did I expect the tears to appear on anything other than a plain, ordinary Monday, a Monday with nothing to mark it as different from any other day?
May life go on, plain and ordinary, for all of us.