A Year Later

Last year Hope was here for Thanksgiving.  I was so on edge that I had to get something for anxiety from my doctor.  I was so tired that I ached all over.  I cried daily.  Hope was probably scared nearly to death and was acting out in ways I just wasn’t prepared for at the time. I wondered what the hell I was doing with this adoption thing.  And of course, I dropped the Thanksgiving turkey at the end of the night right at my front door.  The Furry One was delighted.  I sobbed.

A year later, Hope is legally my daughter.  We are building a life together.  The Furry One is waiting for me at the Rainbow Bridge.  Seventy percent of the time I am bumping up against something resembling happy, kinda anyway.  Some days, even weeks are really, really awesome.  And some weeks are just, well, sh*tty.

As we slide into the next Thanksgiving, I am thankful for the ups, especially during the downs.  I am grateful that we have moved from just surviving.  I’m grateful that we occasionally thrive.  I find it hard to be grateful for the downs. We are experiencing a down period right now.  I’m feeling lots of icky emotions, including a bit of holiday dread.  It doesn’t help that I can barely stop dropping tears over what happened last night in Ferguson, MO or that the field trip I chaperoned this morning was so disorganized that it was somewhat traumatizing or that I miss my dog so very much right now.  I’ve got the blues, and the blues are contagious.

It feels like 20 steps forward, 7 steps back.  Oh sure we’re way ahead, but the setbacks…they somehow just linger and hurt like a million paper cuts, making it hard to remember that I’m still ahead by 13 steps.

So, as I prepare to celebrate my and Hope’s second Thanksgiving together, I’m a little emotional and not in the way I hoped.  I know we will soon again be on the upswing.  I just want to have a happy holiday. It would be really nice. I would be really, really thankful.