The End of the Beginning, or the Beginning of the End?
It's after 9:00, and Hub's not home yet.
It has occurred to me that being a temporary single mom is going to be strikingly similar in many respects to being the wife of a workaholic.
It also occurred to me, isn't it funny, how happy anticipation sometimes resembles dread?
All day at work today, I was trying not to think about Hub leaving tomorrow. But the thought would creep up on me, unexpectedly. Oh, there's something I'm trying not to think about. And then I would remember what it was, and that it wasn't a good thing, and then I would have to consciously push it out of my mind again.
My job involves not just writing but lots of reading. All day long, I read other news reports and analyst reports, and I email questions to the analysts and read their responses.
And today I found myself reading and re-reading the same paragraphs over and over, and having trouble grasping what they meant. Dollar? Down? Huh? I was working in slow-motion, checking and re-checking all of my numbers because I knew my brain was elsewhere
Fortunately, the euro kept rising to new highs so I had to update my market report a lot, which kept me robotically busy.
And I kept reminding myself: no one is sick, no one is dead. Hub is just going away. We'll be together again as a family in the foreseeable future.
So why does this feeling of dread keep creeping back?
And even more importantly -- when will it go away?
It has occurred to me that being a temporary single mom is going to be strikingly similar in many respects to being the wife of a workaholic.
It also occurred to me, isn't it funny, how happy anticipation sometimes resembles dread?
All day at work today, I was trying not to think about Hub leaving tomorrow. But the thought would creep up on me, unexpectedly. Oh, there's something I'm trying not to think about. And then I would remember what it was, and that it wasn't a good thing, and then I would have to consciously push it out of my mind again.
My job involves not just writing but lots of reading. All day long, I read other news reports and analyst reports, and I email questions to the analysts and read their responses.
And today I found myself reading and re-reading the same paragraphs over and over, and having trouble grasping what they meant. Dollar? Down? Huh? I was working in slow-motion, checking and re-checking all of my numbers because I knew my brain was elsewhere
Fortunately, the euro kept rising to new highs so I had to update my market report a lot, which kept me robotically busy.
And I kept reminding myself: no one is sick, no one is dead. Hub is just going away. We'll be together again as a family in the foreseeable future.
So why does this feeling of dread keep creeping back?
And even more importantly -- when will it go away?
posted by L. at 9:17 PM
3 Comments:
You are basically becoming a single parent with 3 children.
For one year.
Maybe that is why the dread?
I am a single parent of 2 boys and yes it is difficult.
Will your hubby be coming home on the weekends for you and the kids?
I hope so.
I pray things will work out for you.
Wow, L. This is really tough. I was part of a "long-distance family" when I was growing up and it does stress everyone out. But you are strong and you will survive. And to a certain extent, we found that this set-up gave us some freedom and some advantages we didn't have before. For instance, it forced me and my dad to communicate better than we probably would otherwise, and that's lasted through my life.
But in the short-term? Yeah. It sucks. I'm sorry y'all have to do it, and I hope you'll remember that all of us are cheering for you through this transition.
Urgh. It does suck, and I think that the dread will disappear once things aren't in this murky unknown category - once it's your reality, and you know what it is day-to-day, you won't be wondering about it any longer.
Speaking as the child of a workaholic, life didn't change all that much during the week when my parents split up - we didn't see my father before, and we didn't see him afterwards. I know that there are a ton of changes that you'll all have to go through, and stresses, but I believe that the mundane side of things won't be that different.
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