I have been away

 I feel like I have been away from life. 

Away from friends, family and just generally distant. It's not that I want to be, it is more or less the constant struggle of this time of year: sick, working, kids stuff... you get the picture. Grayson came home from school with a high high fever. This started a downward spiral of illness in our house which of course left me very very sick. I am currently awaiting test results for walking pneumonia, oh joy. This put a pause on all the things I wanted to do. It hid us from the world for a bit and we were isolated in our own quarantine. It felt like the inverse of 2020 where we were hiding from the illness, but here we were hiding because we were sick. Several hospital trips in the past few weeks has taught me about the dire straights our health care system is in but I don't want to focus on that. Being in that sick void caused me to lose time and then time caught up. We are in the thick of "the holidays" and yet there is no holiday spirit within me. It feels like I am being dragged into it. I want to be excited for the holidays, for the magic in my children's eyes, but all I can think is that a little bit of the magic in me has died along with my mother. I know depressing thoughts, but this is my reality. She is not here. I watched videos tonight of the kids and they wanted to watch videos from last year. It's hard to fathom that a year ago my mother was making comments about the kids opening their stockings. She was poking fun at my dad and laughing at the excited stream of commentary coming from the boys as they pulled out each items from the sock. Grayson sat on my lap as we watched these and I could see the tears well in his sweet little eyes and his face start to frown. That kicked me harder than anything, watching them grieve is so hard because I have no answers on how to do this either. We then focused on Santa coming and wrote letters to santa. That part was fun, but tonight when putting Grayson to bed he started to cry when I went to leave the room. I am not talking a whimper, but a big cry. I asked him what was going on and why he was crying and it was because he was afraid of me leaving. My mother's death put fear in my fearless child. He is afraid of losing me, because grandma was here one day and gone the next. Admittedly, that is partially my fault. When my mother started to decline, Doug and I made the decision that the boys would not see her like that. We wanted to save them any traumatizing memories of grandma in a hospital bed. But in doing so, we orchestrated a situation where Grayson believes people just disappear from the world. 

I have also been trying to get working on my Master's application. to be honest I am fearful... actually I am fucking terrified. I have been out of academia for so long and it would be a huge shift to our world which is already busy. I am wondering if I wait one more year that will be perpetually where I am, just one more year from doing it. I have also been contemplating my reasoning for doing it. Is it hubris? is it something that I really want to do? was I doing it because I said I would do it so many years ago? Being sick gives you lots of time between naps for self examination. An avoidance tactic from dealing with all the chores and laundry (laundry is it's own thing because it is all encompassing of time and energy) 

I guess I have a lot of questions and uncertainty right now with where I am going but I am hoping that I will quit being so scared and act. 

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