Pendulum

I am having a bad day. Not just sort of bad. Really bad. The kind of day when my grief feels fresh, cutting me open from the inside as if I had not been feeling it until this very moment. The kind that leaves me so weak I have no desire to fight the forces of gravity and want to sag to the ground in a pathetic heap. The kind of grief you might see on the faces of the women in exotic countries wailing on the evening news after a devastating loss. When I am ready, I may write about it. I haven't had a day like this in a long time.

Today I came home from a failed attempt to attend church with my family and began frantically scrubbing the insides of my house like a crazy woman. I scrubbed and scrubbed with various sponges and cleansers, trying to wash the darkness I feel down the drain. The tree has been lit, and its 1800 white lights are sparkling. My pine-scented candle is casting a warm glow on my precious set of antique wise men. My toilet bowls are bleached. My floor is pristine.

In my quest to create the perfect holiday home for our son, I have come to the realization I was wrong. You see, it is ME who is in desperate need a safe haven from the outside world, at least at this point in time. Some place I can feel what I want to feel or, in this case, not feel anything at all until I'm ready.

I am progressively more and more uninterested in dealing with how I feel. When I write, I have to feel everything all over again, and, well, that simply sucks. There are times I simply don't want to feel anything painful or profound at all. Times when I want to plod along and do mundane household chores without a thought in my head at all. Thankfully, I can do that here.

Unfortunately, there is nothing left for me to scrub or straighten.