raw

I am not sure where I am and have not known what to write that would not sound like craziness.

This old grief, this old vulnerability, they have one acute gift: the ttc trauma is barely on my radar. I feel as if we are taking this month off in terms of active intervention-- which, if the LH surge happens just on the wrong day, we will need to. The timing is potentially perfectly bad for my Darlin' who is in the end of his summer season.

So this old grief thing has me really off balance, and I feel raw and wired and ready to be wounded by a tone or misplaced glance. Last night I had a moment of near elation which is uncomfortable, this zigzag emotional landscape is not my favorite. I like joy, don't get me wrong, but big chemical joy feels like the far end of a swing before you jump. And I was right, sometime in the dark of the early morning I felt myself crash down.

Of course that is the time of reflection and insanity, 4am, 5... the cat insistent that I wake, the sky brighter than I expected and filled with the sound of rain. I pick up my BBT thermometer, press the button, hold it in my mouth while the cat pulls at the covers and yowls as if starving. I wait and wait and wait and cannot see the readout in the dark. Minutes pass. It never beeps. I try again. Nothing. I feel my eyes fill with tears of frustration as I set it back on the bedside table and finally, as I swing my legs from under the covers it beeps. And in that moment I am sadder than I can say-- this is how I know I am frayed.

I am trying to remember to breathe slowly, trying to be present, trying to focus on one thing at a time. I feel flooded by competing priorities, work is busier than I can keep up with, and yet it must all be done, right now, by me. And I am overwhelmed-- I feel lump-throated. This is vulnerable kate, this kate who has such a thin membrane and so little reserve to draw from.

So today, since I do not have the option of taking care of myself the way I need to, I cannot just go home and be gentle with my day, I will focus on one thing at a time. I will do the best I can with what I have and who I am today.

I just cannot wait to feel less raw. This is not my highest and best, and it is all I can do to remind myself to be gentle, be sensitive, be patient. It is all I can do to remember to treat myself as a beloved. These days will pass, they will, they do, they always have. I am astonished at the body memory of grief, the raw flayed feeling of my heart and memories. The incessant persistence of regret. All useless, all useless since there is nothing to be done. Nothing I can go back and re-do. Impossibility does not lessen the desire I guess. And that is frustrating too.

I used to have an image that encapsulated how I felt-- you drop something precious, your time-sense stretches and as you watch if fall, you know there is nothing you can do to grab it and yet you try, you try, you flail, you grasp and as your fingers touch the smooth surface you send it spinning, and it hits and shatters and there is no solace in knowing it would have happened no matter what- it still feels like failure, failure in the holding, in the keeping, in the dropping, in the saving.

So, me, kate, in the present tense, I wiggle my toes, do EMDR tapping, I will go get hot tea to fill my favorite mug that I will hold between cupped hands, I will try to be gentle with myself today, move slowly, careful of corners, I will retreat as I need to, I will extend gentle loving kindness to those who brush too hard against my raw self, they are not doing it on purpose, they do not mean harm, and yes, that means me too.