It’s been a hell of a week.
The angel of death has touched colleagues, distant friends and family this week. I discovered there’s a food theft/trash hoarding problem in this house (again). A new tennis racket was destroyed in a fit of frustration because apparently you can’t just walk on a court and think you’re Serena Williams even if you regularly post high scores on Wii tennis. An unsolicited, but serious job offer was extended that made me consider what “leaning in” means for me career and family wise. Some kid on the bus brought alcohol. Some other kid seems to have started cutting. Band field trip fees are due. I realized that Hope has gone from being economically disadvantaged to being so very entitled, and that ish needs to be shut down. I broke out in tears during a confrontation with my family pastor on Easter Sunday about the BS way my church has handled my family blessing request. I am fasting from coffee and my evening cocktail, so I’m pissy and petty like a viper and snap in an instant. Pictures from my sister’s recent nuptials reveal that I have indeed crossed over from curvy land into fat land. And if I find that damn tablet on the floor one more got-dern time….
Yappy did finally master sit/stay and make it through his temptation island training test this week, so there’s that.
But, he’s also got his own hoarding problem with that growing lair of his under my bed.
I’ve barely, barely remembered Elihu’s birthday this week. Oh, I’m not prepared to do anything for said birthday, but I did remember to forget it a day early. #helovesmeanyway
I’m tired. Worn out. And I swear my brown knuckles are currently white.
Wasn’t vacation last week?
Oh, right that was a vacation with Hope, which was great incidentally, but when I realized that all the good me stuff I had planned for Easter Monday wasn’t going to happen because I had forgotten that Monday was a student holiday, I realized that the mommyhood vacation realness leaves something to be desired.
Man, this journey is the business! Do you hear me? THE BUSINESS!
I went to my agency’s support group for participants of our older child adoption program yesterday. I admitted to something there that seems dreadful to ever utter.
I fantasize about my life without Hope. Pre-Hope. During-Hope. Post-Hope. Hope-never-existed-Hope.
I fantasize about my life without Hope.
I am going through a period of constantly fantasizing about my old life, in particular, my single, no kids, just me and the Furry One life. I know I’ve romanticized it a bit. You know, it’s like remembering in technicolor.
I remember longingly the ease of slipping into a happy hour with friends or heading to the theatre for some Shakespearean adaptation. I remember thinking about how delicious it would be when I finished school and finally took a nap again. I fantasize about napping in general, with really, really nice bedding. I remember my complicated life as not seeming or feeling too complicated at all in technicolor. I remember being able to see a cool deal on Groupon and just picking up and going somewhere for the weekend. I remember getting massages and getting my hair razor cut by this awesome chick at the salon across the street from my office.
If I stretch my mind, I remember back more than a 15 years ago when my roomie and I would hit the salsa clubs and shut them down midweek, night after night, dancing with our friends. I remember the first time my realtor took me out to look at homes to buy and finally feeling grown up. I remember decorating my home just the way I liked it and having Juneteenth parties and dinner parties and just friends over. I remember how having all the control in my life made me feel. I remember how I took it for granted.
I fantasize about what my life would be like right this minute if I had made the choice to continue on that path when I got to the fork in the road. I fantasize about still being in control of my life.
Well, not all of it.
During these technicolor fantasies, I happily gloss over the heartbreak when one of the great loves of my life dumped me, or when one of my dearest friends died, the first one in adulthood and I never got to say goodbye. I choose not to focus remembering how I wondered if I would ever marry and have biological children. I choose not to dwell, during these fantasies, on the people who openly asked me, painfully and insensitively, if I was ever going to marry and have children. Or the time that I was presumed to be a lesbian because I hadn’t married or brought a man home since college. I choose not to remember the trail of tears of less than great relationships, including and especially the one that launched me into my doctoral program because it was so toxic that spending $70K seemed cheap, yet rewarding expense of ridding myself of his awfulness. I don’t bother with a lot of thought about when the doctors told me I wouldn’t have biological kids and how hard I cried sitting in that office…alone, with no partner to console me. I don’t remember deep enough to dredge up the lonely moments when I thought, on my way home one morning after a night out, that there’s got to be more to life than this. I don’t think too much about how this isn’t the first church that has made me feel like an outcast or how suspicious it all makes me of the whole institution of “religion.”
Nope. I don’t remember any of that as I construct the fantasies of my life pre-Hope.
I’m weary this week.
I do hope that one day, I’ll be reminiscing about these times in my life and that I fail to critically remember ishttay weeks like this one, when I wish I could change the locks or move under cover of night…without her. I hope I don’t remember wondering if any of this was a good idea. I hope I don’t remember how long it took for the joys to outnumber the crap-filled emotions that are too numerous to list here. I hope this period looks vibrant in the future.
But I hope that it doesn’t look so great because that future period sucks way more than this one. I wish I didn’t have to romanticize this period of my life outside of my home.
Wouldn’t it be nice to just reminisce because it was a good time, not because its a technicolor fantasy about “the good times?”
So here’s to hoping next week is actually a good time and a fantasy real.
AdoptiveBlackMom 