I've been avoiding you...

I have been avoiding blogging since my last blog, which was a love note to my husband and was not my typical blog style.  My blogs are raw, deep, and open.  It is usually descriptive of the open oozing sore in my heart and all the feelings that come with it.  I feel like my blog is always such a downer and feel guilty about it so then I just avoid my blog. In some ways this blog is therapy to me.  I reread some of my past posts and it takes me right back there.  The ones with the most typos tend to be the ones with the most emotion. 

I never know how much to tell people without scaring them off.  You know, I usually try to avoid mentioning the dead mommy, and if I do, I try to make it in passing, almost like I am over it and am not still struggling on an hourly basis.  I try to act like I can actually breathe, like thinking about my mom isn’t a struggle for oxygen, a feeling like I might just die. 

This is a reason why I do not really have friends, why I cannot let people in.  I have only one deep friend, someone who was instantly on a deep level with me, someone who I swear is my sister.  Our life circumstances are so alike that we are on sister status.  We even have the same middle name.  My best friend in Junior high had the same middle name as I did.  It was meant to be.  And my dear sweet Laina is truly my sister by heart and she gets me.  I love that I can be free to be real with her. 

As for making new friends, well, that comes harder.  I feel socially awkward and maybe I come across that way, or I don’t, but all I know is that in my head I am constantly wondering how to keep things light and fluffy, how to avoid bringing the dark cloud of my deep pain into these situations.  Especially given that I tell time based on whether my mom was alive or not.  Like my years are no long BC or AD but are now BMD or AMD (before mom’s death, after mom’s death).  It is really awkward to be giggling with friends and blurting out “bahaha yeah that was before my mom died.”  Cue crickets. 

I had the opportunity to go out this weekend, something that truly never ever happens.  I did pretty okay.  I had fun, I laughed, I kept it mostly fluffy and I really did not have to be fake with them, which was good too.  Past them being shocked at my age I think I did alright.  There was no long drawn out story about me losing my mom, my moments of remembering that fact, and the fact that I can barely function.  This was mostly because two of them know my story already and that was a relief.  There was a quick moment where I blurted a couple things out in the bathroom to poor Lisa, but I think I managed it well.  I don’t think I scared her too badly.

I really do try to avoid the mom topic.  The entire topic makes me anxious and I want to go into fetal position.  (Cue: Shauna.  Yes, I want to go into child’s pose just like you, Shauna.) The entire topic brings out details that nobody would ever want to know.  The topic puts me directly back into the day that it happened.  I go right back into the house we were renting.  I go right back to that bathroom where I was bathing my kids when I got the call.  I can hear the phone ringing from my laundry room.  I remember ignoring it since it was a number that I didn’t recognize.  I remember my sister texting me because she wanted to know if I was trying to call her from a different number.  After hearing the voicemail from the officer, I answered the call.  Yes, the topic puts me right back there.  So I avoid it at all costs, yet it is a part of me, a part of almost every one of my thoughts and so the topic tends to slip out there in the open.  This makes it difficult to make friends, or to even retain the ones that I have.  It has to be obnoxious to be around “the girl whose mom died”. 

Nonetheless it is who I am.  That is why my blog has been saturated with my mom and the loss of my mom.  And that is why I avoid blogging.  Yet, I feel better when I blog.  Such a vicious cycle.