OY

Ok. Let's...let's just hope that things will calm down a little bit around here.  Please?  Ok? 

I mean, I know it could be worse.  It could be a lot worse.  Things have been sad, and busy, and busy with sad stuff, but for right now, right this second, things are calm.  Lots of people have it worse than what I've been going through, and I'm going to keep that in mind every time I start feeling overwhelmed.

Yesterday we buried a wonderful lady.  Aunt Brenda, the lady that we always go and stay with on Thanksgiving, passed away Sunday morning after a sudden health issue no one knew about caused a problem.  She and I were close. After my lovely mother-in-law passed away 12 years ago, Brenda became a de facto MIL to me. We talked a lot, and sent each other gifts, and it wasn't until she was gone that I realized how much of Aunt Brenda had been enmeshed my daily life.

It's like waking up and realizing a chair you sit in all of the time is missing, and you have to work around the knowledge that the chair isn't there anymore, and you keep walking to where that chair is supposed to be and it isn't there, and you have to think "well, shit, it isn't there anymore." and then you have to alter your course and find someplace else to sit that isn't as comfortable or convenient, and it throws you out of whack for a while.

She would probably hate that I'm comparing her to a chair, haha!  You know what I mean, though.

We traveled to Georgia on Tuesday for her wake and stayed until Wednesday for her funeral. I'm very glad that she had a closed casket, because I want to remember her the way I saw her last, and not in a coffin.  I sang at her funeral. It's one last thing I could do. Steve played his trumpet, which was nice.

Also, just for fun, I got some bad news about a close friend of mine and I can't help her at all with it.

I'm sorry if I'm framing it as being about me. None of this is ultimately about me and I know that, but people I love are hurting and I can't help them and it sucks.  Sitting around knowing you can't help is bad.

However, up til this point, I've managed to stay relatively gangster. When other people hurt, you just have to stuff your feelings all down and be strong for them, and I think I've managed that so far.  I don't think I've really had time to process all of the things that have happened in the past three weeks, but hopefully that will happen soon. I'm tired, and sick of being sad, and I would like to have some time where I don't have to think about all the bad things that have been going on, but that will have to wait because Christmas is here and we have to go and do a million things and if we didn't do those things we'd hurt people's feelings and there would be lots of questions and I just don't have the capacity to deal with that because the first moment someone questions why I don't want to do some big Christmas thing I think I'll snap and be rude out of sheer exhaustion and hurt someone's feelings and I really don't want to do that.  It's not even that I want to isolate myself or anything like that, it's just that I'd like so much to not have to think about everything shitty that has been going on, you know? 

But...for now, I'm fine.  I'm just fine. I'm gangster. However, I have a feeling that if anyone looks at me wrong or hurts my feelings in any way, I'm going to very much crack apart. 

via GIPHY

Not because I want to, but because there is just a lot of feelings in here that want to get out and I'm not letting that happen, damnit! 

So, that's where I am right now. I'm OK. I'm just full of all of this and it needs to settle. I'll be fine, I promise.  I think I'm just being selfish.

I hug you.