Did the Music Stop?

There are so many times throughout my week that I look around at something going on around me and think, I should write about this.  I will try to remember exact words that were said or funny details, and I will get really excited because I really love to write.  But by the time I get home from work and throw something not-terrible together for dinner and make sure that the dog has been taken out and wipe down the kitchen counters for the hundredth time that day, all of the excitement is gone.  I have missed so many things worth remembering.   

It has been a weird whole year.  Like everyone else on the planet, my existence has seemingly revolved around this pandemic.  It has become the new normal.  It hit me awhile back that all of a sudden, I wasn’t so afraid of it anymore.  The precautions had just become a new way of life; I wasn’t scared to go to the grocery store or to go to work.  My anxiety is still there, buried a little deeper.  I try to be brave, but I really am not.  I am sad that Kylie’s senior year has been such a wreck.  She has missed all of the cool parts of being the big kid on campus…leaving for lunch, the best parking lot, walking the halls and feeling like you have finally reached the top.  She may not have a prom, and graduation will probably be a little odd.  I know these are not big things, but they still make me sad.  I wanted to enjoy these things with her, so I guess I am selfishly sad for myself, too.  She is having her senior photos taken next week, and seeing those proofs will probably send me over the edge.  I cannot believe that she is almost grown.  I do not feel old enough for any of this.  

I am turning 40 in less than two months.  I can’t decide how that makes me feel.  I was talking to a customer a month or so ago whose daughter or son was turning 40, and I mentioned that it was coming up for me soon, too.  She smiled and said, “Forty suddenly doesn’t seem so old, does it?”  She was absolutely right.  It seems like my thirtieth birthday was just a blink behind me, but the girl that I was then has pretty much ceased to exist.  Thank God that my life is so different now; everything was so much harder then.  Maybe life really does get better as you age.  

I catch myself feeling guilty that I will be celebrating my birthday without my friend.  It can’t possibly be true that she is gone.  Her comments pop up on my Facebook memories occasionally, and I look at the dates and wonder if it ever crossed her mind that her days would be so limited.  I feel overwhelming fear over the smallest of things sometimes now.  Yesterday, Kylie was leaving to take the twins to preschool for me, and the dog decided to tag along for bye-byes.  Bella called me out to the car for one last hug and kiss before they pulled away, and as I walked back to my house, I caught myself thinking, What if this is the last time I see them?  What if something happens and everything that I hold dear is in that car?  What would I do? I tried to tell myself that I was being completely ridiculous and that everything would be fine, which of course it was.  I know that I cannot live my life paralyzed by fear.  I have continued to live for 106 days now, even though at some times it seems that I have just been existing.  The vast unfairness of all of it has not been lost on me.  I can talk about it now without breaking down, but I catch myself unexpectedly triggered for no reason.  My friend is gone, and I will never stop feeling sad about that.  

For me, writing about all of this is cathartic. It helps me work through the good and the not-so-good. For days like today, when my feelings seem to be a little large for my body, it is the way that I am able to find my way back to balance.