I don’t know this place well — this place of no eminent crisis.
This place where it’s safe for me to relax my guard just a wee little bit.
This place where relative security still doesn’t quite equate with “normal”.
Whatever “normal” is.
This place of in between.
I know how to manage a crisis, how to wrangle a looming threat, how to cope with tragedy.
I once knew how to live a life so normal and average that it now seems a fairytale.
But this…
This place where my family doesn’t fit any definition or meet any expectation of how things were, are, could or should be?
This I don’t know. I don’t know how to be in this place where we now find ourselves.
So many things are better than they were — easier.
But in a way harder.
We still have a future clouded with surgeries and uncertainties. We still have feeding tubes, allergies and a diagnosis requiring tight medical management. But we no longer have trachs, round-the-clock medications or jolt-you-out-of-bed middle-of-the-night ambulance rides.
I no longer fear on a daily basis that our first-born might not live to see her next birthday.
But I’m finding that in the absence of a non-stop adrenaline deluge, I am suddenly struggling with apathy.
With procrastination.
Fatigue.
Exhaustion.
And an inexplicable tendency to avoid commitment or responsibility of any kind.
Struggling with things I’ve never in my busy, goal-oriented, driven life struggled with before.
One cannot live on adrenaline for six years without consequences, so it seems.
And while I can explain to myself exactly how and why I got here and why my current location makes perfect sense from a physiological perspective, the logic doesn’t make the surroundings any less uncomfortable.
I know that like all things, this is temporary.
I know that time and rest will eventually bring a fresh perspective and renewed motivations.
I know that my footing will be found once more and I believe I will be quite glad to leave this place of in between behind me.
And so will the groceries.
They have been waiting on me to finish puting them away for three days now. 😉
Ever find yourself in one of those in-between places in life?
What did you do to snap yourself out of it?
Find out more about Michelle
Read Michelle’s weekly column
Meet Michelle here each Monday for Magic Marker Monday
Questions? Please feel free to email Michelle at childlif[at]gmail[dot]com or come and visit her at In The Life of a Child