Restless

I don't know what's going on with me lately, but I feel restless. Maybe it's my upcoming high school reunion (20 YEARS! My god!!) or maybe it's getting closer to 40 than I am to 30...whatever it is, I can feel it building up inside me, a little bit more everyday...

I think it all started this summer up at family camp. Looking around at all the counselors, watching them do their jobs and remembering what it was like to be in their shoes like it was yesterday. Except it WASN'T yesterday. It was FIFTEEN years ago now, and even though I feel like I'm still the same age as them, I'm probably just another soccer mom on vacation to them. That realization hit me hard. I'm not young and care free anymore with my whole life in front of me - and when the hell did that happen?

Then I went on this hike by myself, without Hoby or the kids, and this counselor hung out talking to me so NORMALLY - as if I wasn't a Cooper's mom or Rory's mom or Hoby's wife or Jo's daughter, but just me. ME! And god, it felt so refreshing! I hadn't felt like MYSELF in so damn long I'd forgotten what I was like underneath all those other parts I have to play!  And ever since that hike, and that feeling of finding myself again, I haven't been the same...

Since coming home from that week at camp,  my job as wife and mother has felt, well, harder. I feel like I've been trying to put on someone else's clothes that don't quite fit. Don't get me wrong - I LOVE my boys, I do.  I'm guess im just feeling restless, now that I had a two second taste of another life...

Resurfacing

It has been SO LONG.

My life fell apart in 2009. Watching my dad die of pancreatic cancer that year - slowly and painfully - shattered me in a way that I've never completely recovered from. Our family lost it's anchor, and each one of us became lost at sea...for a year, for several years, and some of us still haven't found our way back to the shore.

It's been four years now.  I've tried to put the pieces back together, but they don't fit like they used to. People say that the pain of losing someone goes away in time, but I disagree. It doesn't EVER go away - it just spreads out. Instead of feeling that empty space in your heart trying to swallow you whole every day, it starts to only show up every other day, then once a week, then only now and then. But it still HURTS. That person is STILL gone. And it still SUCKS.

I haven't been able to write since he died. I don't know why - but the words just wouldn't come. I used  to think I wanted to write a book someday - but that dream somehow died with my dad. I had hoped when my second son, Cooper, was born in 2010, I would be able to restart this blog for him... But each time I sat at the computer, my thoughts froze. (I'm sorry, Coop, that I wasn't able to record your first four years like I did for your brother.)

But now, somehow, here I am again.

Hello again, World. I think I'm back.