A Tough Night

Thursday night was a tough night. The work day ended with another reminder that my performance is just not what it used to be. That I had forgotten a few steps in condensing data for a monthly report I do for my boss. And oh did I feel bad. Why can't I seem to remember things? Why are things slipping so much anymore? And I drove home crying and exhausted.

When I got home Mark was not in a good place. He had had a very tough day. This was difficult and I wanted to be understanding for him and not add to his struggle but didn't quite achieve that goal.

Mark's been struggling so much with depression. He finds it very difficult to sleep. His body hurts. He keeps having nightmares about all our children dying. Being haunted by memories of picking up his lifeless body off of our bedroom floor. So he was not in a good mood and after one not too particularly good interchange between the two of us, stayed away from me the rest of the evening. That meant it was up to me to clean up supper and get the boys to bed.

It wasn't until that night after the boys went to bed and I was dragging myself to bed after falling asleep sitting up that he came in to the bedroom. I was so exhausted I was hoping he was just coming in to say good-night. But he wasn't. He wanted to talk it out. And what progressed was not one of our better conversations. On a side note, it sure wasn't one of our worse either. We've screwed up communication a whole lot worse on other occasions. And in this case, the conversation was ended before it could go either way better or worse when his phone rang and he left the room. I breathed a sigh of relief. I pulled back the covers, laid down, covered myself up and felt overcome by pain so much so that sobs just poured out me.

It seems like a whole mess of stuff was just crashing down on me in waves as I kept sobbing. Pain. Hurt. Rejection. Fear. Loneliness. Disappointment. Grief. Anger. Bitterness. Uncertainty. Longing. Andrew. Baby. Hurt. Pain. So much pain. Andrew! Agony! Hurt! Emptiness.

This went on for a good 15-20 minutes as my husband talked on the phone down the hallway. Loud sobs I stifled from becoming so loud they would be heard. Sobs that I didn't try to stop since I knew that I was finally letting something out that needed to get out. Sobs that I knew were releasing some of the pain and hurt and whatever else was in me poisoning me for so many weeks now. Sobs that drenched my pillow until finally sleep overcame me.