Ordinary laura

There has been a lot to grieve lately. It feels as though it is coming in an especially unforgiving way, in heaps and waves that are far too close together… There isn’t enough room to recover from the one without getting sucker punched by the round that follows. This morning my husband called out my name from our bed as I was trying to quietly get dressed for the day. He was falling asleep from working all night long. “Laura…” “Laura…” he doesn’t usually use my name and he is particularly good at talking in his sleep so I figure he is just delusional-tired and drifting in and out of sleep but he says my name again and I notice his face is wet. Tears… I quickly stop in my tracks…whats wrong? I realize I had heard his ring tone coming from the bedroom as he shut the door to go to sleep. I’m connecting the dots. 

Sometimes sadness is just really sad and debilitating like getting the wind knocked out of you during a soccer match, sometimes it nips at you and you don’t feel like you have the bandwidth to address it, have a conversation with it, and sit with it properly so it becomes an overall mood that drags you down and makes you angry. It can even make you angry at other people who are just living their lives who haven’t contributed to the pain at all but are just there…not being helpful, or being too loud or too happy. Grief can make you throw a pity party for yourself every day, sometimes three times a day. It can make you wonder whether or not trying to live life with other humans is worth the hurt they will cause you or you will cause them. It can make you wonder if anyone really gets it and cause you to consider moving far away to somewhere more beautiful and far from family. 

And if you share your sadness it might cause your friend who really deeply cares to risk sending you a comical GIF about how when there are bad things in life you should pay attention to the good things because they probably outnumber the bad things, and it’ll make you laugh and feel a little less sad in that moment, a little less woe is me, because you know she and that stupid GIF is right.