Having a Moment

I had a moment yesterday.

As in, all day I was cranky, and sad, and teary. It didn't help that we didn't do our normal hide-the-Easter-Basket thing that became our silly "so what we don't have kids we have fun!" tradition, because of all the pandemic nonsense and because Bryce is in the thick of prepping for his Candidacy Exam/Proposal Presentation part of his PhD. We had some Easter candy, but it was a little hollow without the tradition (ha, ha, hollow like a chocolate bunny I did not have). And then I felt all hollowed because MY DAMN EASTER CANDY GLUTENED ME.  I mean, seriously? I did a frantic internet search because I had all the symptoms of a glutening, but I swear I've eaten Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs before without issue. Well, apparently Reese's Peanut Butter Cups are fine, but any seasonal shapes are no longer gluten free even though the ingredients do not tell that story at all. Flabbergasted. And sooooo disappointed.

But that wasn't everything.

I've been so freaking busy figuring out the whole online school thing and trying to do right by my students and provide the support they need, remotely, and also trying to set up boundary times (and failing depending on the day), that I sort of bottled up all my April feelings and let them build up until they leaked out my face yesterday.

You see, April 7th is the three-year anniversary of the prednisone-fueled mental breakdown that signaled the end of our family building story and put me in a place with my anxiety I hope never to be in again (although honestly this pandemic is not helping). It's not the anniversary of when we made the decision, but it's the anniversary of that rock-bottom point that, once I was no longer in a days-long fight-or-flight response, led to the decision and that feeling of ENOUGH. I cannot do this anymore. UNCLE. (Also, April 7th was the date of my uncle's funeral that I did not attend because of Bryce's weird throat virus and my autoimmune nastiness.)

Oh, and then April 9th is the one-year anniversary of my hysterectomy, of the ultimate come-back to "you could still have kids! You're not that old!," ha ha. Which isn't necessarily a sad date, but is also the culmination of so many years of striving for that organ to do its damn job that actually ultimately helped lead to its demise (and maybe gave me the answer to our repeated failure in my postmortem uterine diagnosis of adenomyosis).

Both those April things are heavy in their own way. But both of them are also reminders of freedom -- of the freedom from the organ that caused me such pain and disappointment and loss, and freedom from the constant striving and putting my health at risk by stretching myself to the limits of stress, grief, and anxiety for the shot at parenthood. I said goodbye to both the vessel that I'd hoped would deliver me my child at one point and the dream that I could become a parent at all through the adoption process, and those are heavy. But the lightness of moving forward and letting go of what just wasn't coming to pass for us created space for our new reality, our new life, a new freedom to accept what isn't and embrace what is.

So while I was teary and sad and just...off yesterday, it was also a sort of catharsis to feel those feels, so I can more fully appreciate what April looks like now (even though it includes a pandemic and weird earthquakes and windstorms and a whole lot of Armageddon-feelings). Because although all that weirdness is happening, I am still holed up with Bryce and taking ping-pong breaks and walks around the loop to visit the goose couple in the pond and the turtles in a different pond and all the many herds of deer in our neighborhood (not a lot of people, which is why we're okay taking the walks).

Sometimes you just have to sit in the woe-is-me for what was lost in order to find a newfound appreciation for what is gained.

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