Filler

It's been well over a month since I last wrote anything on here.

The short version: We're here. We're fine. Just been busy and doing other things, and had nothing to say.

But.

Yesterday was what should have been Charley's 34th birthday, and two weeks ago was our seventh wedding anniversary. Christmas is only three days away, and Thanksgiving was only a month ago. I got a short-term tech writing contract in November that has been prolonged and buggy but sparse in the hours. Energy has been low, worry has been high, and a generalized, low-level feeling of blah and fear have marked much of the last two months. The euphoria (if that's ever what it actually was to begin with) of the first month of school and our newer normal wore off, and the excitement and enthusiasm of starting my photography business was tempered into something...else. Much of the time I'm so used to doing everything on my own that I don't really pay attention to how tiring and hard--and how much work--single parenting still is...but these past two months, I've felt the downward pull of it much more consciously. Simply getting Anna to and from school and her few extracurricular activities; making arrangements so I can do a few, fun, social things throughout the week; finding the time to get the work done for my contract while having to, yet again, work from home; trying to find extra reserves of motivation and excitement to do scary but strategic business things: I'm finding there simply isn't enough time in each day or week, or enough extra energy, to be as happy, energized, and perky as I'd like. Or to make as much forward progress as I'd like.

Grief is a weird thing over the years, particularly as the time gets longer and longer from Charley's death. In the earliest years, it was easy to know how tough things could be and that I needed to be gentle with myself in making it through things like December, or going back to work. I had low expectations, and mere survival was the only goal. But as I've felt better in general over time and as the grief has, for the most part, ebbed away, I forget to make allowances for difficult things. Anna starting school and officially becoming a big girl; financially needing to go back to work; the holidays--they're all big and potentially complicated things, regardless of being a single parent or a widow. But since grief, per se, isn't a normal, regular part of my life now, I forget to keep watch for it, until I realize I've been a somewhat fearful, overwhelmed mess inside my head for the last couple of months.

Except it doesn't really feel like grief, exactly. Instead I'm feeling the after-effects of it: the lethargy and uncertainty, the paralysis at times. And I'm too quick to dismiss it because it's not as bad or as hard as everything was earlier in grief...but I forget to allow it its due, too, and that they are hard things.

So yes, we're here. And I'm okay...just not as high or excited as I've been other years lately at Christmastime...or as I was two or three months ago. But our tree has been up for a week, Anna's presents are wrapped, and Christmas shopping is done. What needs to get finished by Christmas Eve will get done as and when needed--and the rest, whenever.

And as much as I fear, sometimes, what needs to come next, I'll be glad when December is behind us again and I can face the brand-new, clear slate of 2011...or at least a stretch of several months with nothing extra-loaded and difficult.