Category — Uncategorized

I passionately hate my progressives. Remember how they replaced the lenses in March? The coating on the new lenses started peeling a few weeks later, and there is now a handful of blobs on the right lens.

No matter how often I adjust the glasses, they still slip down. I prefer to stumble around the house without seeing anything than wearing the glasses. Taking them off is my equivalent to other people’s bra removal at the end of the day. I sigh with relief when I can take them off my face.

“There is a way to fix this,” Josh told me. “You can get new glasses and make the bad glasses your backup progressives.”

Simple, yes. But I now need to muster the energy to go to the store, try on glasses, and buy the insurance in case the new ones peel, too. That is a lot right now. So I keep wearing the terrible progressives and wait until work ends for the day, and I can leave them in the case until tomorrow.

When the twins were little, we belonged to the Science Center, which showed movies in the Planetarium. There was a movie about black holes that freaked us out (yet, for some reason, they kept asking to see it again and again), especially its description (and accompanying animations) about spaghettification.

The idea is that as you approach a black hole, “an object is stretched in the direction of the black hole (and compressed perpendicular to it as it falls). In effect, the object can be distorted into a long, thin version of its undistorted shape, as though being stretched like spaghetti.” In other words, you are pulled apart in the most painful way.

That is how leaving the kids at college felt.

This is a dramatic description for someone who feels otherwise about leaving their kids at college, but it’s how I felt.

I used to use my HSG as my 10 on the pain scale. Delivering the twins without an epidural was a 9. Getting my tooth drilled without Novocaine was an 8. But that HSG was my eternal 10 until now. Dropping off the kids at college was physically and emotionally painful. The physical pain ebbed and flowed, sometimes reaching a 10, other times fading down to a 5. But the emotional pain was always beyond a 10, and it started weeks before we left, burned through the week we spent moving them in, and followed me home.

And I kept thinking, “This is what we were so freaked out about when they were little, thinking about the idea of falling into a black hole and how we would be pulled apart.” I felt like I was being stretched and distorted as I faced down the moment we would have to say the final goodbye until fall break. I was falling toward a nothingness. An everythingness. And there was nothing I could do to stop it.

I don’t feel like myself. I am not good company. My home still feels like they will be back after school: a used cup left on the counter, books stacked on a table. They are finding their footing and thriving, figuring out college, new friends, and new places, which is a relief. But I still have a lot to figure out, including how to get through the day now that it looks and sounds and feels so different from how it was before.

Thank you if you reached out. I’m sorry if I didn’t respond. I really don’t feel like myself right now.

I am not writing my blog right now because I realized mid-August that it felt like a burden instead of a release. I am too sad, navigating the twins leaving for college. I scheduled these posts that day so the blog wouldn’t be empty, but I could pull back and use the time left with the twins. A cop-out, but forgive me. Having them go is really, really hard. I need mental space to feel what I am feeling, help the kids through the transition, and sit in the quiet for a moment on the other side.

This week contains the last first day of school. Months ago, I wrote about this day, dreading it because it removes another buffer between our lives up until this point and when the twins leave for college.

“Very soon, we will have a final first day of school. And then a final last day of school. And then a final last day of summer. And then a college arrival. And then a college drop off and drive away. And I will have to get through each of these moments. And right now, I don’t know how I will do that.”

I still don’t.

Read the rest here.

I am not writing my blog right now because I realized mid-August that it felt like a burden instead of a release. I am too sad, navigating the twins leaving for college. I scheduled these posts that day so the blog wouldn’t be empty, but I could pull back and use the time left with the twins. A cop-out, but forgive me. Having them go is really, really hard. I need mental space to feel what I am feeling, help the kids through the transition, and sit in the quiet for a moment on the other side.

We write them, setting them adrift in the great Internet ocean, tiny wobbling boats that we hope will reach a friendly shore. We have no idea where they go once we release them. All we know is that we once owned them and now they are out of sight, affecting the people who swim past them. All we can do is wait to hear back from a tiny voice in the distance telling us that they heard us. They understand.

I spent my morning telling a person how her words changed my life.

Read the rest here.

I am not writing my blog right now because I realized mid-August that it felt like a burden instead of a release. I am too sad, navigating the twins leaving for college. I scheduled these posts that day so the blog wouldn’t be empty, but I could pull back and use the time left with the twins. A cop-out, but forgive me. Having them go is really, really hard. I need mental space to feel what I am feeling, help the kids through the transition, and sit in the quiet for a moment on the other side.

I feel like for the last several years, society as a whole has been in a war against the word okay. We curate our lives online to look happy. We read books about how to gain happiness, either directly when we’re talking about Gretchen Rubin, or indirectly when we have people presenting happiness as the side effect that comes from decluttering your life like Marie Kondo. We go on wellness retreats to regain happiness in our life and talk about finding bliss through ordering the perfect meal and hang inspirational quotes on our walls that we find in kitschy stores.

And all of that is okay. Really, it’s okay. I think it is wonderful to strive towards happiness.

But in this world we’ve created, okay becomes the last rung on the happiness ladder before one steps off into the abyss, the lowest appropriate thing a person is allowed to say as an answer to the question, “how are you?”

Read the rest here.