Breaking up is hard to do…

Sometimes, out of nowhere, I am punched in the gut with nostalgia. This week it happened while perusing Offbeat Home & Life’s daily offerings and I cam across the article: Exploring the very painful world of friendship breakups. I could barely read the title before I was bombarded with a rush of memories. There was Peter Pan in the park, laying awake and watching the starts in her pickup truck while we overlooked our college town, and long long loooong talks after church on the green couch in the intern room. There were Survivor Nights and Bible Studies and many talks of demons and the perfect boyfriend and family drama and Narnia.

She was my best friend.

After college we both moved away and life happened. The first year we talked all the time, even racking up a 1,000 roaming phone bill while I lived in New York for a summer, and made all sorts of wonderful plans about our future as friends. And then, we stopped talking.

It probably wasn’t that dramatic, because, she was in my wedding, and then I was in hers. But weekly phone-calls turned to monthly turned to every six months. My heart felt broken in a way that a man has never done. It was this ache for a friendship love that I cannot accurately describe. And, without Facebook, I don’t think I’d know anything about her life. But, it’s not for a lack of trying.

When I tell people about this soulmate-friend, because that’s how it feels, they always question why I don’t call her. And I say, “I did, for a long time,” and it’s true. I called. I called and called and left messages. I waited months and then called again. And, at some point, I need to have reciprocity. Despite my anguish over her not being in my life, I cannot simply spend my energy on a one-sided relationship. I can’t. I don’t know what went wrong between the two of us, if anything, or if time and distance and life have just gotten in the way, so I don’t blame her or myself for the brokenness. But I am sad, nonetheless about the absence of her friendship in my life. And I want to tell her:

Dear Lewis-

Let’s be friends again like old times?

Love,
Clark

Word Vomit

-I was in a car accident on Tuesday. The first one that has ever been my fault, and wed are crossing our fingers that it isn’t totalled. Worst part (beyond the pain and wrecked car) was that it wasn’t due to anything but a brain fart. I wasn’t txting or even pumping (though I had finished pumping recently)…it was simply a moment of distraction. And a lack of sleep, I suppose.

-Potamus is 5 months old today. He has been Teething and has a bum rash which has left him (and us) crabby, with not very much sleep. My heart breaks every time he goes to nurse and cries and cries because of the pain. I finally have given in to liberal amounts of tylenol and gum numbing liquids and he finally comfort nursed and fell asleep today. Hallelujah. But mama needs some sleep.

-my sister-in-law is filing for separation from my brother and is refusing for him to see his daughter unless he is supervised. My heart breaks for him. She is only 1 month old and already her life is in tumult. I tell him to hang in there, that the first few months of parenthood are SO hard, and she may be suffering from post-partum depression/anxiety/ocd/or psychosis. 

-Potamus is doing this sweet things when he falls asleep. He likes his back to be patted, but he also likes to hold onto my thumb…and with his other hand, he reaches out, and grabs a fistfull of my hair, or strokes my face, or jams his fingers into my mouth (or, ooops, eyeball). It’s like he is memorizing me. And while it is startling, when he wakes up sort of suddenly, and reaches out to touch me on the arm, or face, as if to say to himself “are you still there mama? Oh yes, phew, you are.”

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My brother and his wife had a baby about 3 weeks ago. I went and saw them a few days after the birth, and then yesterday I learn that my brother was in a car-accident.

He has been drinking again.

And apparently taking her prescription pain pills.

And they have been separated for a week.

My heart hurts so much. I am looking at pictures of him holding his sweet daughter and I can’t help but ache for him, and his daughter, and his wife, and the pain that addiction brings into our lives here on Earth. To be honest, their relationship is tumultous at best, volatile at worst, with a combination of her bi-polar and his addictions, but it’s always been the two of them working through it. They’ve been separated more times that I could probably count in the short 5 years of their marriage.

But now there’s a baby involved.

A sweet, innocent bundle of dark hair and love, that is here on Earth experiencing turmoil from the beginning. I feel sad. And angry. Angry at my brother for his choices, at his wife for hers, at God and the World for all of the pain we must endure in this lifetime.

I look at my sleeping boy and think back to times when Post Partum Depression has raised its ugly head within me, and the stress that Boof and I have been in, and under, with work and life and love, and yet this pain we have experienced in our own little world does not seem to compare to my brother’s pain.

Not to mention, I go to work everyday with families on the brink of collapse or implosion or explosion. It all seems to much to bear at times. Like I want to curl up and sleep forever, with the sweet breath of my baby on my face, my dog curled at my feet, and my love holding my hand.

Will I ever stop crying for all the pain I see around me and in me?