Being Okay

So, here I am, on a lonely Sunday.  I went to church and came home.  I'm chilling out until the time when my kids will come home.  I tried to take a nap.  It didn't work.

I feel restless.  There are things tugging at the corners of my mind.  Vague shadows, like monsters in the closet or under the bed.  There are things bothering me that will never go away.  There is work to do that I don't feel up to doing.  I'm stuck in a kind of neverland between the busy I was yesterday doing everyone's laundry, et cetera, and the busy I'll be as soon as everyone is home.

It's silent.  No one is expecting anything of me at the moment.  These are the moments I yearn for when everything is noisy and I have five or ten demands on me.  But this doesn't feel like a moment I yearned for.

I should be enjoying it.  I should be able to sleep.  Or maybe I should stop trying to sleep and get my outfits for the week set up.  Maybe I should cook dinners for the upcoming week, do something to make the time ahead of me easier.

Will the time ahead of me ever be easier?

I feel like I've lost myself.  I am always older than I've ever been.  Will I ever be the same again?

I keep going to the gym and cutting what I eat, but I keep gaining weight.  I want to write, but I'm allergic to the imaginary voices finding fault with whatever I might have to say now that my life is upside down.  I keep cooking meals, cleaning the house, tending to the household, but it seems to keep falling into disarray anyway.  I keep taking care of and protecting my children, but they seem to keep spinning farther away from me.  It's their job to do that, I know that.  But who am I now?

I keep going to church, paying tithing, praying.  I keep fasting when it's fast day, and even sometimes when it is not.  I read my scriptures most days.  I still believe.

I think I still believe, but where are the blessings I need?  Where is the promised land I've been trudging toward for at least forty years?  Are my prayers actually piercing the ceiling, or are they just bouncing off like soft billiard balls, making endless arcs and curves throughout my empty bedroom?  I know I'm loved, but where are my friends on a quiet day like this?

The invisible arcs of the billiard balls curve through my bedroom, hitting the closet door, the wall, the floor, the light switch, the ceiling, the blinds, the bed, my chest.  All the thoughts and questions and images and restless feelings just keep bouncing all around me like waves.

I try to catch one and pin it down.  What on earth is really the matter?  What can I pin down?

Yes, my life is different; I wanted that.

What is wrong?

Are the people I love still out there in the quiet somewhere?  Has God forgotten me?

I sit still on the bed for a while, just waiting for the arcs and curves of the balls to form some kind of pattern, to settle somewhere, for heaven's sake.  To spell something out.

I finally get a coherent thought.  It is this: Will I ever be okay again?

I stand up and look for something to eat.  I close the fridge.  I already ate and don't need anything.  I pick up my pile of laundry and smooth the bed covers.  If I do something, maybe I will feel better.

Will I ever be okay again?  I want to text my best friend and ask her.  But I hesitate.  What is she supposed to do with a pregnant message like that?

Will I ever be okay again?  I pick up a newspaper to move it off my bed.  My eye catches the headline to an article I had meant to read.  "Senior LDS missionary back. . .from Belgium."  I start to scan the article.  This is the man, older than I, who was blown up by a bomb but has lived to tell the tale.  And there, like a ball that finally found the pocket in the table, is my answer.  I read, "The first blast broke Norby's left fibula and left heel and sprayed him with shrapnel.  He also suffered second-degree burns to his face, ears, sides of his head, leg and the backs of his hands.  He later suffered an infection while hospitalized. . . ."  All of this happened almost four weeks ago.

I shake my head at my self-pitying self and get up to write.  There is nothing so wrong with me that I cannot proceed to be me.  Maybe writing will help someone else.  Or maybe it will help me.  I have to keep being me.  That is what being okay is.