Widows keep telling me that I shouldn’t expect too much from myself in the first year. This year is a brutal nightmare. The governments of two countries expect a lot from me this year. My kids expect a lot from me. The trouble is, I’m running out of give. For reasons I am not going to get into the person who came for surgery support isn’t working out. She is leaving. I’m feeling pretty terrified. I had surgery 11 days ago. I have 10 weeks of recovery in front of me before I am supposed to resume anything like a normal schedule.

I’m grateful for the help she was able to provide. Now I need to keep rolling along.

I miss Noah so much it feels like I am going to die from my heart exploding. He spent a lot of years learning what he had to do to get me to rest. What specific subset of chores has to happen so that I can go to bed and relax? He knew. He could scan a room and see what would bother me and what I can ignore. I miss my love. I miss my husband. I miss being special and important. I miss having someone worry about my pain and discomfort. I miss having someone to talk to for as many hours a day as I wanted to talk.

There are things I’m struggling with that I can’t write about. Our family culture is not an easy one to join. We talk about things in ways that are, sometimes, deeply alienating and uncomfortable for people who are not part of it. I always regret this mismatch but I also have no desire to change. I do not want to give up this part of my culture and I can feel an insistent wall of decisiveness between me and anyone who tells me not to keep this part. It happens at times. They mean well; I see that. This came after many years of hard work. I’m keeping it.

I’m feeling incredibly insecure. It seems kinda reasonable right now. I am not going to try to guilt trip myself out of this. Being disabled and having three kids is fun load to carry. I should feel insecure. I have to figure out how to carry forward on my own. It doesn’t help that this is a Biblical plague year for me. I am hoping less will go wrong in the months to come. I have fun travel and adventures stacked from August to October. One reason I need to be careful about recovery is I have incentive to not drag things out. If I want anything to go well later then I need to nail this pacing on the first try. No setbacks.

No pressure.

I had a good hard cry with my son yesterday. I don’t feel good about leaning on him for support. He said, “We waited until I was basically an adult and I am offering you are not demanding it. This doesn’t count as parentification.”

Thing is, I’m in a hard spot. I either get help from the kids or I hurt myself in a way that might hurt them in the long run. I am not handling the level of helpless I am very well. This feels demeaning and degrading. This was hard enough with Noah around to pet me and tell me that I was a good, brave girl. I’m feeling neither good nor brave this time.

It’s interesting going through the process of getting to know someone new right now. I am an insecure nitwit, that’s for fucking sure. I was asked if anything about a body horrifies/bothers/something me. My brain is barely operational right now. I’m having to rewrite half of my sentences due to complete incoherence. I am dropping words and I’m having to route around gaps. It’s weird being in my brain today. It’s not a good place.

Anyway, he asked me if bodies bother me. I responded with a list of all the horrifying body situations I’ve been through. He said I am basically a nurse.

I have a knee jerk response to that. No, I’m not that cool. What I am is someone who grew up poor in the US. We have to develop a wide range of skills and no one is coming to take care of us when we get most ouchies. I come from a family of people prone to getting in major accidents. There’s not much about a body that can upset me. People have bodies. Bodies need care. I care about people. No, bodies aren’t an issue for me.

I don’t have as early a response to body odor as many do. If anything I smell hard working mammal and enjoy it. I’m not upset by farting though I may make jokes sometimes. I don’t care if someone shaves or lets hair grow.

I am talking around an issue I’m not explaining. I’m alluding to an insecurity and I’m not stating it. I’m doing a lot of that kind of thing right now. I’m talking around the hole in my brain where Noah belongs. He is supposed to cut through my meandering and simplify my problems and issues so they feel more tractable and fungible.

I want promises I can’t have and wouldn’t believe. I want certainty and my life is completely lacking in it. Instead what I have is bone deep terror of the future. I have a track record of people not being able to handle me very long. I won’t be kicked out of my home when this happens anymore. That’s an improvement. I am going to have to start levitating and not having needs though. I can’t need anyone.

I have to hold everyone in an open hand, ready to release them when they need to go.

I did actually feel pretty secure for a while there. I believed Noah wouldn’t leave me. Such hubris. I mean, he didn’t leave on purpose. He is still gone. I allowed myself to believe I would have a future in which I was cared for. More the fool, me.

I know people love me. That’s not something I doubt.

I feel like dog shit. I should try to sleep a bit more. I hurt so much in my body and in my soul and in my mind. Then I need to get up and make breakfast. It doesn’t matter how I feel. It matters what I do. I have babies to feed. Get on with it.

I’m not ok and it doesn’t matter. I have work to do. I have people who depend on me. I am not the most scheduled person. I get enough done.

I got through the big scary email from the accountant yesterday. I didn’t get almost any other admin work done because I ran out of time to work. I have a very limited number of spoons every day right now. Triage is hard. I hate being vulnerable and weak and needy. I am incompetent. It hurts my soul to be this. Oh fucking well. That doesn’t matter. It’s simply accurate.

I need to hide like a cat while I heal. Asking for support is such a fraught thing. Instead of support maybe nothing beyond food happens for months. Maybe that’s good enough. If I’m not selfish I will hurt myself more. This is feeling absolutely impossible to resolve in a way that has me getting more adult work done any month soon.

I’m not ok. It really doesn’t matter. I don’t get to stop.