5 Months. 8 Paragraphs. 13 Bullets.
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I’m not sure where I start with this post. The last five months of my life have flickered by like lightening. Sometimes the days feel like they’re barely moving at all but then you start to add things up and it goes from being a heat wave at the end of August to Valentine’s Day in the blink of an eye. I don’t know if there’s a point to this post other than the fact that I need to write it down so I can stop dwelling on all of it.
I don’t talk to people much about my problems., there’s maybe a handful I confide in. I tell my Mom everything. There’s one friend I talk to every day, she gets the brunt of this and I appreciate the hell out of her. Then there’s friends at work who see me when I’m melting down and they can usually pull me out of a funk better than most.
I write it all out. That’s how I cope. It’s how I can step back, look at the issue, and see if I handled it like a normal person or completely overreacted.
Here’s the cliffnotes version of everything that’s happened since August 16th.
Bought a house (exciting and nerve wracking)
Turned 30 (horrible, still not coping, and no one seems to really understand)
My nephew was born (the brightest point in this whole thing)
Received sexually explicit texts and photos from multiple unknown numbers for three months
Contracted shingles due to stress a week before Thanksgiving
One of the windows of my new house was shattered the DAY before Thanksgiving and three days before we held my Mom’s 60th birthday party there
My brother, sister-in-law, and I threw my Mom her 60th birthday and that was actually a blast and she loved it
Went to two funerals
Multiple people in my family were diagnosed with cancer
My brother, sister-in-law, and I took my nephew and my Mom for their first trip to Hershey Park (cold but so much fun)
Rang in the new year/decade single and sad like I have for the last ten years
For an entire week in January my heart would flutter every 15-30 seconds for hours on end probably due to underlying stress and anxiety, but I’ll find out after I see a doctor
I gained 15lbs over the course of four months (stress eating) and can’t get it off
I mean, come on, that’s seems like overkill. I understand life has peaks and valleys, but this is a bit excessive for a short amount of time. If all of this happened over the course of a year then I’d probably think nothing of it. Most of that took place between mid-October and mid-December!
I know other people have worse problems. I’m not one of those people who joins in weird competitions of complaining to see who has the shittiest luck. No one has good luck, everyone has problems. Big or small, they’re personal, and there’s no need to measure your problems against someone else’s. If it upsets you, then it’s meaningful and it matters.
My nephew was born on the anniversary of my Grandmother’s death. My Grandmother and I didn’t have the best relationship, which is putting it lightly. I like to think she sent my nephew on that particular day as an apology. Like “I know I was awful to you, here’s something wonderful for you to enjoy”. And he is wonderful and perfect and adorable. Through all the chaos of the last five months, seeing him on the weekends makes it tolerable. Watching him grow and change and develop gives me something to look forward to in this insane mayhem of life. Oh, and before you even start, no, he does not in any way make me want to have children. He cried and screamed for a straight half hour the one day and I almost put my head through a wall. I’ll keep renewing my birth control, thanks.
Through all of this, I still enjoyed Christmas. The bright spot of every single year for me. I love it like a little kid does. I have a countdown to it on my phone every year starting on January 1st. Some years it’s harder than others to get into the Christmas spirit but I force myself to do it because it’s worth it. I hope it’ll always be worth it.
In conclusion, if I could get a month where NOTHING HAPPENS, that’d be great. Even if it’s February, the shortest month of the year, I’ll take it.