What the hell is going on?

Last week I wrote about my grandmother's health crisis. It's been a challenge to process everything when absolutely nothing is certain. The uncertainty is making us all feel... Off balance. Stressed. For me, this manifests itself as a constant stomach ache. I have moments where I feel fine, where I get absorbed in my daily life and responsibilities, and then it hits me. My vision blackens around the edges. My core contracts. I feel shaky.

This is so hard because we all love her. But there is conflict. I don't know what to do. I'm trying to make sense of it. I have no idea what the hell is going on. People who are scared and in pain sometimes grasp at things that in broader context, don't make any sense. I want to yell at them for that. I also want to cut off all contact with them. I also want to comfort them and make sure they're ok. I want to run up there and take care of every last detail. I also want to pull up the drawbridge, hug my babies close, and pretend none of this is happening.


Here is some steam of consciousness mind garbage that I've been thinking this week. It makes very little sense, because I've been in this heightened fight-or-flight adrenaline place for a couple of weeks now. Every time the phone rings, I jump. My brain is not braining per normal right now,, but here goes anyhow:

I can't know what happened when I wasn't there. Not now, not in 1972, not 6 months ago, not this morning.

I will do my very best to neither over-react, nor under-react, even when body is telling me to freak out. Don't listen to your body, Julie. 

I will show grace to people in pain, even if I feel disappointed in them. When people are disappointed in me, I hope they'll do the same.

God grant me the power to stand up for myself when I need to and to take responsibility for that which is my part.

Help me to distinguish between unreasonable expectations and my duty to my family.

When someone expresses their low opinion of me, forcefully and vividly, I must make a choice to listen or ignore. I will listen.

I will also choose, however, not to subject myself to ongoing verbal abuse and my children to the fall-out of their mom feeling chewed up and spit out.

I will respect the choices that other adults make, even if I don't agree with them. But I will not feel responsible for those choices or for their good or bad outcomes.

I will try my very hardest not to be an asshole, today and every day.

I will not pretend things are fine when they're not fine because that makes people crazy.

I will try not to worry, with stomach churning anxiety, about things I have no control over.

I will try to recognize that there are situations where nothing I do will ever be enough.

I will find humor in every possible situation, even if it's absurd or inappropriate, like that time when my grandmother yelled at the nurse that only democrats could change her bedpan.

I will remember all that is going well. I will be grateful for the life & family I have. I will not be a big floppy, whiner cry baby about this because so many people deal with way worse every day and they don't take to the internet to moan about it.

Thank you for letting me vent all over you.

(c) Mommyland Blogs 2013-2014

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