Truth bomb: I'm a mess.
For two days this week I sat on a couch and basically did nothing except watch TV and play games on my phone and stare into space while my mind replayed scenes from the last 8 weeks.
My sleep is restless and despite doing nothing I still feel tired. Somehow I am both sad and numb to the pain. I am relieved and crushed by the sentencing. I'm lonely and desperate to be left alone. I'm nearly vibrating with nervous energy - desperate to do something - anything....and yet unwilling to leave the sofa. It's not good.
Yesterday I actually made myself be hyper-productive - cleaning and filling my day with chores. And yet despite the activity I still felt listless inside.
It's a marathon of a situation. And I hate to use that imagery, because I have a father-in-law who is super accomplished in running marathons....so don't picture him. Picture me...I've run 20.5 miles of a marathon. (Again, don't picture actual running - picture an awkward combination of walking, limping, jogging and standing still in frustration...)
When I attempted a marathon several years ago, I had trained for a half-marathon and somehow missed the math that this race would be double the half marathon I trained for. The first 8 miles were a lark - so much fun watching all the other people running around us and seeing their costumes, reading their t-shirts, overhearing bits of conversations. It flew by. The next 5 miles we dug in - the temperature was starting to fall the crowds were thinning out based on your pace and the wind picked up. We were running down the boardwalk of Virginia Beach looping towards the starting line (the course was a figure 8) and you actually ran through the finish line at 13.2 miles - people to the left ran through the finishers corral getting metals, bananas and other swag. People on the right continue for the second half of the race. It would have been so easy to veer left and be done. But we signed up for the marathon and actually didn't feel like we would die - so we kept going.
Life right now is the second part of that race. Take the most draining activity I have ever done (the half marathon) and double it. Without proper training. Running in sleet. Into the wind.
Every part of me feels wrung out, yet we aren't done. We aren't even halfway done with her incarceration. Somehow, with nothing left to give, I have to stay positive - keep encouraging Bunny - be a mom to my boys who also are processing this (and now home all the time thanks to COVID-19) - be a wife - a homemaker - a college professor - a daughter - a friend.
I have nothing left.....but I'm not done.
During that race, out on the windiest location of Virginia Beach, watching the clouds grow darker and the chop of the water - David and I realized that we were as far away from the finishing line as we could be. As soon as you round the bend at the lighthouse, you are now bringing yourself closer to the finish line with each step. Just run the last 6 miles, an arc around the edge of the beach, and you'd be done. And yet - we knew how depleted we were.
We sat down.
Eventually a van came around and picked us up and drove us back to the start of the race where we parked the car. No medal. No banana. No swag. We were thankful to be in van with heat - out of the rain and sleet. We went back to the hotel - stood under the hottest water we could stand in the shower and slept.
There's no metaphorical van here. This race has to be completed. We have to just keep moving. One foot in front of the other. Or maybe sometimes I'll just sit down for awhile.
While there is really nothing "to-do" anymore - we aren't even close to done.
And somehow, I will need to be enough.
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