Getting Used to It

I laughed yesterday. One of my students said something funny, and I laughed. I was so surprised that I went over and hugged him. As the day wore on, I was sad and aware of the pain, but I was not stricken, not the way I have been. I worked. I went to the bank. I came home and met the HVAC technician.  I got to the end of the day, and I realized I hadn’t cried. I thought, “Okay, I’m getting used to it. Maybe it’s starting to get easier now.”  So I took a sleeping pill and went to bed, and for the first time in nearly two weeks, I slept almost until the alarm went off.

And then today.

As one might expect, while I was working, I was okay: students, papers to grade, progress reports... perhaps I was a little less cheerful with the students than I normally would be, but I was maintaining. After teaching my classes, I remembered that I needed to make a phone call about one of mom’s bills. The practicalities of it all demanded, and so I picked up my cellphone and dialed. I had to speak with two different people, and they both were so kind, and each independent of the other said how sorry they were, that she seemed like such a sweet lady, was so nice to talk with on the phone.  I gratefully acknowledged that she was, indeed, a lovely woman. It was bittersweet. A little later in the afternoon, while I was helping students do make up work, it was as if a truck hit me, and I found myself putting my head down and taking huge breaths, trying not to be too obvious in front of my students. By the time I got home, nothing was going right. I was short-tempered and bitchy. I found myself sitting on the back porch watching my little dog and trembling.  All it took to finally finish me off was a phone call from my dad; I mostly held it together until I hung up and then I was standing in the kitchen and crying like a baby, wanting nothing more than to talk with my mommy, to hear her voice, to know she’s there.

I am not getting used to it after all.

Here are the tears again, and I suppose I can be alright with them. Mom should be here and she isn’t, so It somehow feels correct, not “good,” but “right” to just want to cry, to not to want to laugh or smile or be anywhere near happy. Life is not as it should be, and the tears help me prove it to myself and to the world.  I think that someday I will want to be happy, but right now, I don’t.