I'm Pretty Sure This is Pretty Awful

Today was one of those days where you get quite a lot of work done, but at the end of it all you sit and ask yourself “Are you positive you actually did that much?” You know, the kind of day we imposter syndrome experts thrive within.

I succeeded in not getting that sad for a significant portion of my day, and I’m going to call that a win.

I’ve been giving myself some fun tech projects to keep my brain busy, which is probably why there aren’t many concrete physical artifacts to prove that I did lots of work—but I KNOW I did lots of work. I’m setting up my own personal cloud server so that I can stream my music to myself wherever instead of paying Apple or Amazon or some other company for the right to do that, given the fact that I’ve already bought it. And who has two thumbs and wants to figure out how to stop paying for iCloud space every month for the rest of his life? This guy.

The dogs had an excellent training session this afternoon—the trainer worked miracles with Sage and Ivy back in the day, so I’m hopeful that she’ll be able to help me get Coco on track as well. The main thing is working with her on acceptable boundaries for her behavior, and don’t we all need to learn about acceptable boundaries for our behavior? Coco certainly does, at any rate.

I’m sitting here at 10pm and realizing that I’m actually feeling okay. It’s that time of night when I usually sink into deep despair (if I’m going to), and I’m happy to report to you all that I’m feeling okay tonight.

“Feeling okay” doesn’t mean “feeling better than ever, bud”, but it still means “feeling okay”, and that’s another win.

I had another excellent class tonight. I swear, this group of social work students is really on the ball this summer. Either that or my perspective about who is trying hard is temporarily skewed by the fact that I’m trying hard myself, so any effort at all resonates with me as being good enough. No matter which of those is accurate, I’m happy to be teaching this class, and I wrap up each Tuesday night full of joy at the fact that I get paid to spend time educating these folks. It’s a really good job.

I have a literal truckload of mulch occupying a significant portion of my driveway this evening, and with any luck Kellie’s garden is going to look even more awesome by this time tomorrow night (as long as the rain holds off).

My dad is spending a tremendous amount of effort to make this garden a tranquil spot for folks to sit and contemplate Kellie and what she’s meant to them. It is a real testament to his patience and perseverance that he continues to spend hours out there every single day.

My mom is spending her own tremendous amount of effort to cook all my favorite meals from childhood, day after day after day. It’s been a real shock to my system to see each new meal appear, scrumptious, comfort-inducing, magical.

It is a humbling experience to have them here. Humbling because I’m not doing much to host them besides paying for stuff every now and then. I mean, they live in my house, and I guess I usually pay the utilities. But it’s a very different scenario to have your parents come to take care of you in the midst of a crisis. If I’m doing okay most days, it’s due in large part to the fact that every Wednesday, my dad washes my laundry. And that once or twice a week, my mom makes a meal plan and grocery list. And that I have people to talk to in the morning, and again at lunch, and then again at supper and afterward. The dogs and I need that right now. I hope that we don’t always need it and that they can carry on with their own life and their own priorities at some point. But for now it’s lifesaving stuff.

I could never have anticipated that any of this was going to happen in my life, and I wouldn’t have wanted to believe it even if I could anticipate it, so there are multiple levels of defense mechanism one has to make it through to believe that a scenario like this is ever going to pop up in any of our lives. And yet, here it is, sitting on my chest like a rhinoceros whenever I think about Kellie not just being temporarily gone. I’m always able to almost believe she might walk around the corner any minute, even now.

Tomorrow is the seven week mark since she died, and it still feels just as fresh. I’m still just as surprised when I walk into our bedroom and see some of her stuff missing. I’m still always looking for her around the table at each meal, or making sure her car seat is cleaned off so she can sit in it, or. The list goes on long enough to almost not qualify as a list at all. It feels more like this alternate dimension I find myself in could fade away any second. I know it won’t, I know this is real life, I’m not delusional. But I halfway wish it would anyway. Looking at her photos tonight, I’m struck by how much I would give away in order to have her back (or, put another way, by how little I would need to be deliriously happy if she were just here). But she’s not, nobody’s offering me that deal anyway, and then the moment passes.

I hope your week is going well, and I hope you’re resting somewhere with someone you love. I am too, but she’s awfully quiet. This whole house is awfully quiet. Time to turn on some loud music, do the dishes, and hope I don’t wake my parents.

XOXO,

Matt