Where I've Been

You're probably wondering where I've been the last month.

Well, I'm not real sure, to be honest. 

Christmas came at me so fast and so furious it seemed I was sitting on the front of a runaway train speeding down the tracks toward Christmas faster than I could breath or get myself together. I was room mom for both kids classes and that week before holiday break I was in party mode. I had something planned for each and every second of each and every day. It was crazy.Then we left the next Saturday for Brad's parents house for Christmas. That's where most of his family got a nasty tummy bug on Christmas Day. His mom and I were the only adults not sick and about half the kids were down. It was pretty un-festive. We left the day after Christmas to head home for a few days before driving to Dallas to spend Christmas with my family. That's when I got sick. We spent the weekend with my family celebrating and headed back Monday. That's when Phoebe got sick. She seemed to have a lighter case (thank heavens) and we were still able to head back to New Mexico so Brad and Eli could go skiing in Taos. Phoebe had planned on skiing, but then wimped out when she got super cold and the runs were harder than last year's at Angel Fire over Spring Break. We came home Sunday and the kids started back to school on Monday. 

And I fell apart. 

I always get a little depressed after Christmas. You plan and bake and party and shop and wrap and clean your way through the season, and then it's over. And you're left with a sad "back-to-normal" mentality and decorations to put up. 

This year seemed especially hard. I couldn't pull myself out of the fog of melancholy I woke up in every morning. I didn't want to do laundry or go to the grocery store. I didn't want to unpack or clean. house. I didn't want to do all the little things it takes to get children up and away to school and then ready to do it all again when they get home. I just wanted to curl up in my bed and ignore the world for a time. All my daily responsibilities, all the things I'd failed to do this Christmas (our annual Christmas cookie decorating, our caroling party, the tardiness of my Christmas cards), all my Christmas decorations still staring me in the face even though it was well into the new year felt like a thousand little weights. Weights that by themselves weren't all that heavy, but all piled up together felt like a cloak lined with lead I wore all the time. I couldn't shake it off. Everyday I woke up with high hopes. I'd get the kids off to school and get a shower and things would go downhill from there. By the end of each evening, I was a mess. Overwhelmed by life, guilty because I felt like I was letting everyone down, and hurt that I couldn't change it. 

Things are better now. The "drowning" feeling steals creeps up on me every once in a while and I feel so sad I want to go away and hide. I got a (much overdo) B-12 shot last week so my fatigue isn't quite as debilitating. I still want to crawl into a hole and hibernate for a good long while, but I can fight that urge...mostly. 

During all this, I kept wondering about my little blog. I wondered if I'd ever want to blog again. I wondered if I'd ever find my words again. I wondered if anyone cared that I wasn't posting. I wondered what would happen if I just never posted again. But I wasn't ready for that. I'm not ready to let this little space die. It's the place where I write about my family. It's the place I write about my journey as a wife and mom and person. I hope to continue to do so. I hope that I want to even if no one else is still reading except my husband. I hope that I can be more open and transparent in the next year with what I'm feeling and thinking. And I hope that you'll keep wanting to read. Because I'm vain like that, I guess.  Plus, I still have Christmas photos I need to edit and post.

So I guess that's where I've been. Both literally and figuratively. It wasn't a great trip, but I feel certain that by posting this I'll realize that so many others have been in the same hard place thinking the same hard things.  I think that's the real key in this life-journey...just knowing that you're not alone or crazy or  as invisible as you think you are.