Waves

It's hitting me in waves that he is gone and not coming back for months. One moment I am fine and the next I can't believe how totally alone I feel. His visit was bittersweet to say the least and not at all what I expected overall, but despite some rough road it was worth it and necessary. I think there were a lot of things left unsaid and I am not sure if that was hurtful or helpful and only time will tell at this point. From minute one of his leave I could feel a tension and it never let up. In fact it seemed to get worse at times. I really did want to bring up some things that were weighing heavily on me, but ultimately I decided that this was not the time to have deep conversation and drag up painful emotions. My goal for the week was to get through it without breaking down (too much) and allow him to spend as much quality time with the kids as he could. Mission accomplished in my opinion. He left this early this morning to rejoin his unit and again I am having trouble with dealing with the sadness. This morning, after we got a few hours sleep, I let a few tears go while watching TV with the kids and my precious two year old son comes up to me, wipes my face and asks "Ok mommy?" I wanted to sob. I know now that I have to be stronger for them. I'm sure it is not good for the kids to see mommy so sad all the time so today I held back whatever tears I could and now have a horrible headache to show for it. I just want to crawl into bed and sleep away a couple of days and let my subconscious process my emotions some. For now I must settle for my few hours instead.

Brave

*deep breath* So today I was a big girl and I faced a personal challange alone. I sat in a doctor's office waiting room for an hour, in the exam room for 30 minutes and lived through a 20 minute procedure on my own. In one sense I am proud of myself and proved that I can handle difficult emotional and physical issues without someone right next to me, but in the other I am sad that I had to at all. I know that is what we signed up for when he joined the National Guard, but I don't think I had full understanding of what all of that meant. I do now. I believe that my recent challange would have been easier for me to face had we been apart for a longer period of time because him only being gone for two months has not given me enough time to gain the confidence in myself that I can push on as, simply, a single parent. But who's to say I guess, it might always be this hard. There will always be obstacles to face and the way we all, as a family, handle them will change based upon the needs of the moment.
As for the procedure itself that was truly something I don't want to go through again. It wasn't really as bad as I expected, but it was by no means pleasant. During the initial stages I felt my body go into shock which sent me into full anxiety attack mode, but I held it together as best I could...at least until I got to the car. My prayer is that the results come back from the pathologist non cancerous and that they got it all. Like I said, that is not something I want to repeat.
I do think that this was a growing experience for me, as not fun as it was. I feel a little better about my ability to handle emotional situations and deal with personal demons in a healthy manner. Thank you, by the way, to everyone who has sent well wishes and prayers. I'm that was what held me up today.