Bits About This and That

I miss them.
I can't believe it happened.
I feel like I don't love them enough.
I feel like my family doesn't remember them.
I feel like I'm so scared that something will happen to her.
It's so unfair.
I love her so much.
I wonder what it would be like if they were here.
I wonder what they would have looked like.
I feel guilt.
I feel anger.
I feel sadness.
I am elated.
I can't believe she's here.

Same.

So, something different. I doubt you're going to make it to the end of this because I have no idea where this is even headed. It's just that my heart is heavy.

Autumn is here. I love it. The changing of the seasons is one of the reasons why I'm not sure I could live anywhere but the midwest. We are wearing sweatshirts and the air is crisp. Upstairs there is an apple cider candle burning, making the whole house smell like autumn.

I'm not sure why, but it is always the start of this season when I get homesick. I live 3.5 hours away from the town in which I grew up. A tiny town of just under 1,000 people. I love it and I miss it. Mostly, I miss my mom-even though I see her as much as I can, I wish she were just down the street. I wish I could stop by whenever I feel like it. I wish she could see Avery whenever she wanted. I wish we could go shopping on Saturdays together. I've lived away for over 10 years now. I have a home here. A beautiful home, a great husband, a good job. I wonder if I will always feel like that is home?

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I had a really messed up thing happen when I was in college. My parents got divorced. I mean, I know that I'm not the only one with divorced parents. And they needed to get divorced. But it happened like this:

I came home from college because I needed to get a root canal.
That night I was very sick from a bad reaction to the anesthesia.
My dad told my mom that they were going out to dinner with the neighbors.
She told him that she was not going because someone needed to stay with me since I was sick.
He said she was going.
She said she would not and he could just go by himself if it was so important.
So he did.

I went back to school and two days later my mom called to tell me that she was moving out. She did and I never got to go back to the house in which I grew up. I never got any of my things-my momentos and photographs and books. I never got one last look around. I never got to go out to the swing where my grandmother and I used to sit.

When I was little I was very aware of the fact that my parents hated each other. I was VERY aware of the fact that people walking by our house and our neighbors could hear my parents screaming at each other day after day. I knew that when my dad was in a "mood" (which was very often) I should retreat immediately to my room, shut the door, and turn on my favorite music as loud as I could.

I knew that when my dad called me terrible names and that I wasn't supposed to believe them.

What I also know is that people have it much, much worse than this. BUT in the interest of being honest, I did not luck out in the father department. He has terrible anger issues and he berated me, put me down, screamed at me, made me feel like nothing I could do would ever be right. He was worse to my sister. He never hit us, but once he shoved me in a closet because when I had opened the scream door to get something off the deck the dog had gotten out. I feel like if provoked, he would've hit me. I never EVER said anything back to him during his rage-I just cried and hid.

He was having an affair with a neighbor. The one he went to dinner with the night of my root canal.

He sucks. And everyone tells me I'm stronger because of it. Stronger because I don't believe the things he told me. Stronger because I can remember in 4th grade wishing my parents would get divorced. Wishing that my father wouldn't use those words. Wishing that my mother would tell him off. Wishing that someone would see.

Three of my grandparents died within one year. Stronger.

I watched my father-in-law die of cancer. Stronger.

I was struck with infertility. Stronger.

I watched my babies die. Stronger.

I would rather be weak, I think.

I have a colleague at work who lost her husband suddenly to a heart aneurysm. We were having a heart to heart about loss and she told me that at this point she's worked so hard in her grief and has made so many changes in herself that she wouldn't take him back. Wouldn't take him back.

I have mulled this over and over.

I can't grasp it. I am sure that I could never say that. That I couldn't say I would never take them back.

But what if to get them back I would have to never have had Avery?

I am so glad I will never have to even think about that because it is impossible.

Ok, I think I need to stop-my brain is nearing it's end of connection-making :) Thank you for reading this if you made it to the end. I am just having one of those days of nostalgia...or something like that.