Monday night I did not feel well. It was a normal enough evening. It was colder than a witch’s tit out. It was raining. It was a perfect evening for potato soup. We had some friends over for dinner. I had one glass of wine. Pretty normal. By the time I went to bed, I felt like shit. I lay there, unable to get comfortable, tossing and turning. My stomach literally felt like it was going to explode. I kept going between thoughts of “shit, my appendix is minutes from bursting” and “lord, please don’t let my children find me dead in the morning” and “holy fuck, how the hell am I going to get to the hospital because certainly if my insides are exploding, I shouldn’t drive, and my driver went and died on me and I don’t want to call 911 because what if I’m really fine and just have a bit of gas, that would be super embarrassing, and I don’t want to call my parents because they’re probably sleeping and they don’t generally sleep well so I definitely should not disturb them and I don’t want to call any of my neighbors for the same reason I don’t want to call 911” until I finally go to this thought – my husband felt like this, but far worse, every fucking day for years. And that one thought stopped me in my proverbial tracks.

I am the type of person that is generally pretty good about compartmentalizing. I can come off as abrasive and uncaring, I think. Which isn’t true. It’s just how I deal. I can remember being at the park with Jack when he was around 2 years old. This was before I’d really made any other mom friends, and Ash was working all the time, so it was just him and me, hanging out, parking it up, doing the mother/son thing. He was playing on the slide. I was sort of paying attention, sort of day dreaming about what I used to do for fun before watching 2 year olds climb up the ladder, slide down the slide, giggle, repeat. Again. And again. And again. You get the picture. Next thing I know, I see Jack tumble off the side of the slide about halfway down and land with a big thump in the dirt. There are other mothers and children around. I hear the gasps and the “oh no’s” and the “is he ok’s”. I calmly get up, walk over to him, help him up, look him over one good time and tell him “tough boys are tough.” (Now, before you get your panties in a wad, Jack came up with the saying tough boys are tough and used to say it all the time whenever he took a tumble or got a scratch or anything like that – I wasn’t just being a bitch. For the most part.). I also then heard more gasps but of a different nature this time. These were the “I can’t believe she just said that to her hurt child” gasps. Here’s the thing, the fall hurt, there’s no doubt about that. But I knew he was fine. I knew the bigger my reaction, the bigger his reaction. I also knew I was being hardcore judged for my seeming lack of empathy and hightailed it the hell out of dodge.

Exhibit B – Jack played on a travel baseball team when he was 9 (he was on a 12u team and my point to that is not to say how good he is, my point is that he’s young playing against much bigger and better players, especially pitchers). It’s the weekend before Ash passed away. I’m sure I’ve told this story, but my point is different this time so I’ll allow it. Jack is up to bat and takes a fast ball to the face. And he hits the deck. I mean, he falls out. And what do I do? Nothing. I stand at the fence and watch until finally the coach yells at me to come to Jack, he’s down and he’s bleeding. So I went to him. I didn’t panic. I didn’t cry. I didn’t coddle. Hell, I didn’t let him skip the next game. I mean, I sort of gave him a choice but he’s my kid and he chose to play. I grabbed his tooth out of the dirt, gave him so ice and returned him to the dugout to cheer on his team.

I’m not big on coddling, I don’t get sad because my children get older (that’s the whole point of life, if you’re not getting older, chances are you’re dead), it’s rare that you will see me cry in public and I will make more jokes about my husband being dead than is deemed proper (is it ever deemed proper??? Probably not. But I deem it proper and Ash knows who he married so I’m willing to bet he deems it proper as well). It’s who I am. I can lock things up in my brain, and I can throw away the key or I can only let them out on my terms.

So Monday night, while I’m lying in bed convinced I’m dying, I thought of my husband. I thought of all the pain he endured and I thought of all the living he did while he was in that pain. And I felt shame. Because I never fully grasped what he was going through. I never actually put myself in his shoes and imagined how he must feel; partly because I had no idea how much pain he was feeling, partly because I had my own shit I was going through and partly because I literally couldn’t. I let myself imagine it Monday night, mainly because I thought if I was feeling even a fraction of the pain he felt, how the fuck did he not only endure it, but keep living his life while he did it? And how selfish was I to keep pushing him to do things? To complain when he didn’t feel like doing things? To feel sorry for myself for what I was going through? I’m a fucking prick. And that’s when I lost control of my emotions, weeping uncontrollably while still trying to determine if my appendix was rupturing. (Side note – it wasn’t. I’m fine.)

But all of that has led to me to this – God made me abrasive for a reason. He made my brain work the way my brain works because I have to survive. If I were to constantly think about what Ash has been through, what my children have been through, what our family has had to endure, there is no way in hell I could function. It is just too hard to bear. When I let my mind really go there, I become paralyzed with grief and despair and loneliness and unending sadness and shame and guilt and so many other feelings that are difficult to function with. So God gave me the tools to lock it up. I can let it out when I need a release, when I need to remember, when I need to feel that pain. But I can also put it back in the recesses of my mind and go on being a mother, daughter, sister, friend and pain in the ass. I can be me. Sarcastic, witty, abrasive, me.