What does a woman do when faced with a possible threat to her perfect, meticulously-crafted life? Evidently, she stops posting on her blog. She turns inward in the worst possible way while outwardly joking about the worst possible outcome. She cries a little, but her body doesn’t really make many tears. So, she frets. Her skin breaks out. She tries to continue her normal routines….waiting….waiting…waiting for an answer, an answer she knows won’t yield an absolution.
She comes to the realization that, even with the best possible outcome at present, this will forever loom over her happy little family. She turns to the internet and learns all she possibly can about the situation. And she realizes this is something she cannot fix. She cannot control. She cannot make better. And she feels guilty about all of this because, for all intents and purposes, the brunt of the situation is not happening to her body, but that of someone she would give her life for, but giving her life won’t even help this.
She becomes irrationally territorial and rabidly possessive of her space, her time, her heart, her body, her babies, her Sarge, her world.
She remembers all the times she asked herself when the rug was going to be pulled out from under her and realizes this might be that time. She tries to balance the panic with the knowledge that the situation is almost certainly not terminal. Scary, life-altering, intrusive, sad…..but not terminal.
She attempts to arrive at a place in her mind in which she reconciles the fear and sadness and the unknown with the tangible, the known, the unchanged, and the unchangeable.
The initial terror and despondency wane a bit. She knows people count on her every day, count on her to be present in mind and body, count on her to keep the raft afloat. She knows she’s strong enough for this. She was strong enough for much worse at an age when no little girl should have to be. She knows Sarge is strong enough for this because he is a superhero after all.
Clearly, she writes vague blog posts because she isn’t ready to spill all the nasty details until she actually knows the nasty details. It isn’t in an effort to seem pretentiously mysterious, but more in an effort to craft a Band-Aid of words. Because Band-Aids always make it better….until they fall off in the shower.
She will continue, her aura forged into an impenetrable brick shithouse she dares anyone to infiltrate at the moment. She didn’t punch the bitch in Wal-Mart who couldn’t decide which peanut butter to buy. She didn’t throw her frosty at the Wendy’s employee who didn’t put enough cookie dough in it. She wanted to. She really did. But Sarge and the boys need more than that. And she knows she is more than that. She has to be more than that. Because this isn’t happening to her body, although she’d bear it for him without a second thought.
So, revel in the silliness that is everyday. The inconsequential. Daily comings and goings of your well-manicured world. All the little things that never really give you pause for a moment of clarity, but rather that you’ve come to expect as well-deserved rewards for “being a good person” or “making the right decisions.” I wouldn’t wish on anyone the reality that randomness is without discrimination, the reality that the air that is in your lungs at this moment is just that- air. Nothing more.
Please be happy.