March: Let the PTSD Begin

I think I have learned to dislike March. It's a rough time of year, for a lot of different reasons.

One is that March has become the new Month Of Much Snow -- for a couple years in a row March has been particularly harsh, with snowstorms and cold weather and definitely no hints of lasting spring to be found. Maybe little hints, like the snowdrops that came up briefly before getting totally entombed by more than a foot of heavy wet snow, but then BAM! Reminders that it's still winter. I hope those snowdrops have a Lazarus moment when this all melts.

This is the view out my classroom window Friday, on what was NOT a snow day. 

Another is that I usually have my annual review meetings in March, and so it is filled with writing IEPs and having meetings with parents and meetings with students and parent phone calls and getting reports from service providers and assembling a giant packet of documentation in preparation for a day of meetings. My packets are due Tuesday. My meetings are 3/27. I LOVE having my meetings on the early side because it takes them off my plate and allows me to truly enjoy both April Break and fourth quarter, but it makes the first two weeks of March pretty hectic. I can see the light, though. The end is nigh.

Lastly, just the fact that it is March is reminding me of last March, and 2017 was awful in general but March, April, and May were particularly heinous. Luckily I didn't put a whole lot up on facebook while going through the worst days of my life, so  that"On This Day" feature will not be super triggering. However, I know EXACTLY what happened on particular days in March. And I am feeling just a little anxious and blech about these particular anniversaries.

I've already started the clock -- I had the ice skating trip already where I fell and hurt my elbow and spent February Break in a sling, and miraculously this year I did not injure myself. I did fall all the way at the end because a hockey player cut in front of me and I went "Nononononononono... FUUUUUUDDDGE" and ACTUALLY SAID "fudge," thank goodness. I landed on my butt, which all things considered is one of the better places to take a hit. That was actually the SECOND unfortunate event last year. The kickoff was breaking my crown on SALAD and deciding to have it just smoothed out since the gold cap part was intact so it was just cosmetic, and it's my very last molar so who's going to see it? Not even me. But I was reminded of that when I went to the dentist over February Break. I mean, I obsessively run my tongue over it daily, but I don't think about how it came to be. That was truly the beginning.

Now we're coming up on Bryce's birthday, and that was a day we spent entirely in the Emergency Room and it was no fun at all, as it was snowing, and my eye was all gross and red, and it took FOREVER to be seen. Which was okay because other people had more emergent issues, but it was a pretty sucky birthday for Bryce.

Not a happy birthday boy. I'll spare you gross eye redux.

It's just hard to think about all that came after that. All the physical and emotional pain, the complete and utter slamming into a wall of "ENOUGH," a period of time where I enjoyed lying facedown on the floor.

Occasionally I've found myself wanting to lie on the floor, facedown, again...but I'm consciously choosing not to. It does make me nervous that just the timing of things is bringing that back to the surface. And the pull to the floor is strong.

It's a weird set of anniversaries, and it is very, very hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that it's been almost a year since everything went so very wrong. That the series of unfortunate events had already begun this time last year.

But, I am stronger than the pull to the floor. I have truly found happiness after profound loss. I carry that loss with me. It never goes away. Sometimes it burbles up to the surface like sulfur in a hot spring, and spreads its stink about what was initially a beautiful, relaxing scene. Sometimes it is just like another thing in my purse (my purse that can hold a HARDCOVER, by the way!) -- I know it's there, like the mini altoids and more lipsticks than any one person should carry daily, but I don't think about it much.

Somewhere in there is my grief. But more clearly visible is a fun hardcover book that FITS IN MY PURSE! The lipsticks are in that zippered part. I would be ashamed to show you just how many there are in there. 

So, March is tricky. April is trickier. April 5th is when the shit hit the fan and I went to the emergency room AGAIN because it sure seemed like I might be dying, and then had a semi-public breakdown that has had the lingering effect of reducing me to tears when someone says "we can always put you on Prednisone," and was out of work for a little bit scooping up all my gooey parts and trying to reassemble into a functioning human. And May. May is when our dream of parenting officially ended. May is when we officially made the decision, May is when we called the agency and pulled the plug, May is when we dismantled a nursery, packed it up, and donated it to someone else who needed it. But then after May, the onslaught of remembrances ends. The "On This Day" will get me in June, as that's when I went "facebook public" with our decision. But otherwise, anniversaries become planning our trip, taking our trip, building up my office, redoing our spaces for our new life.

So that will be something to look forward to.

And this year, I know how it all turns out, so far at least. So that's something.

Someday this will not be quite so hard, will not be so fresh and raw and easily reopened. But for now, I am not loving March, and absolutely dreading April and May. I have to make a plan for self-care, for making new memories to smooth out those incredibly painful ones. Wish me luck.