Keep moving
There are times – it seems actually most of the time at the moment – when I feel like a little toy figure in need of someone to come along and wind it up to set it in motion again. As my spring winds down, I find myself moving more and more slowly in smaller and smaller circles. There are still so many things I need to do, but each step seems just a bit further than I can manage, and multiple steps seem to make up an insurmountable distance. To answer this email, I need to make that phone call, but first I have to find certain information, and it all seems just a bit more than I can cope with. Sometimes it is easier to just answer the phone and agree to go for a drink with whichever kind person is calling me; sometimes it is too much of an effort to even answer the phone. So I wind down a little bit more.
Kind people keep assuring me that I need to be careful, take it easy, give myself time. From experience I know they are right, and I also know I have to be careful not to take on too much and risk going over the edge again, as I did after Amy’s death, because now Peter isn’t here to help me pick up the pieces and put myself back together. Sometimes I worry, though, that there is a grey area between taking it easy and coming to a complete standstill, incapable of taking any action at all. I’m afraid of missing the boundary within that grey area and coming out on the wrong side.
Yet there are still people who come to give me a hug as soon as they see me, every time I go into town, people who share their memories of Peter with me, others who remind me that I have never been helpless and weak and will not become so now. When the computer seems like a black hole that will suck me in as soon as I turn it on, I keep looking for different approaches, a safe way to sneak up on it. Soon I will have a new bed, a smaller one, just the right size for me and two cats, so it won’t feel empty, and it will come with a lovely soft matress for my aching old bones. Then hopefully I will eventually be able to sleep again and wake up feeling rested.
I just need to keep reminding myself that I am not a toy figure needing to be wound up again. I am a person surrounded and kept safe by so many wonderful people. I need to hold on to the conviction that someday I will be able to take responsibility for other people again – someday, but not yet. For now I can only feel grateful for so much patience and understanding and just keep trying to keep moving.
