Is anyone still there? It’s been more than 3 months since my last blog post–had no idea when I posted that I was just about two weeks away from meeting baby! Then there was our ICC stay, Eric went back to work a couple of weeks later, and we’ve just barely been getting by since then.
To be fair, if you looked in our house, you’d probably think we were doing great. Relatively clean, bills paid, fridge stocked, garden beds refreshed for the growing season… it’s true, we have the basics under control. I can always find something that needs to be put away, a phone call to make, etc but objectively, we handle our daily lives well enough.
It’s the things you don’t see, the things we don’t say in everyday conversation, that are compelling me to come back to the blog. Writing is therapeutic for me. Sometimes I write about our days, holidays and house projects, among other fluffy things; and sometimes I write about deeper things.
At the end of my pregnancy, life was very difficult. Between physical pregnancy symptoms whilst trying to care for a high needs toddler, it being the dead of winter, family conflict, and COVID, my OB pressured me to take antidepressants to deal with my poor mental health/stress. I am not opposed to psych meds overall, but in this situation, it would have been like putting a bandaid on a broken bone. I felt deeply opposed to medicating a non-medical problem.
Now the physical/hormonal symptoms of pregnancy are gone of course, but the problems beyond my body remain. Maybe I was secretly hoping everything would magically be better after baby was born, but quite unsurprisingly, it isn’t.
So whilst the day-to-days are easier, I can feel these elephants in the room staring me down wherever I go, whatever I’m doing. The reality is three hard truths:
1) I don’t agree with many things that are going on in the government and surrounding the pandemic right now–and there is very little I can do about it. This is the world I’ve brought my kids into, too. “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
2) My family of origin will never function as I think it should, therefore those relationships will never be what I want them to be.
3) We don’t fit in where we are right now. We are simply not Midwestern suburbanites at heart; this is my hometown but not my home. We’re pining for the expat life (once COVID restrictions are loosened enough) just like we did before kids–even more so now. And if restrictions never loosen, homestead life is on the table too.
Anyways, not much else to say at the moment. We’re doing fine on the surface but praying for signs for the big things. I have always been someone to live my day-to-day life based on logic and reason, but rely on my intuition–or, if you’re Christian, which I am, signs from God–when it comes to the big ones. I feel impatient, but I’m waiting and watching for a sign.
xx Claire