Little Did I Know Then

 

I can feel myself returning to some semblance of who I used to be. I can see interact with other people without feeling like I want to unzip my skin, jump out, and run away. I think I laugh and smile more. The other day, I found myself dancing in the kitchen while I was making dinner. 

As long as I don't think about it - this pandemic, the things that we have lost, I am okay. So, I avoid those things as much as possible. I check the news once a day, I play this stupid, mindless game on my phone and I fill my days with work, projects around the house and activities. I am slowly coming alive again. 

But the other day, I was at the grocery store and I had my headphones in and I'm rummaging through the dried beans and I hear, "Tralala...." and my blood run cold. There was this song my daughter discovered in February. In the last weeks of driving her to school, she played it every morning. I hadn't heard it in so long. It was like I was immediately back there, in the passengers seat as she drove to school. What an exciting time. We spoke of the upcoming pageant, things she would need from the prom, Governor's School acceptances.....There was so much hope and excitement then. I wondered if that was the last time she was happy. I wanted to throw up. Like, I thought It was okay but there I was in the middle of the grocery store having a full-on panic attack.

My youngest will return to school tomorrow. She is going in-person. She needs that. A few weeks ago, she came downstairs in the morning and was in a bad mood. She plopped down at the kitchen table. "What's wrong I asked her?" She just looked up at me with the saddest eyes and said, "I just want to go back to school."

"I know," I said. What else is there to say? It's happening tomorrow but my brain has not reconciled it at all. Logically, I know that school starts tomorrow but my brain is like screaming confused, "None of this makes sense to me!!!!" It doesn't make sense to me that she is going into high school because middle school didn't really end. Does that make sense? And there was no lead up to this school year. For the longest time, we didn't even know if she was going to go back to school at all and there was no real anticipation because you can't have hope or look forward to something that can be so easily taken away at any minute. 

There was no parent meeting or freshman orientation. There were no stores packed with parents getting back to school supplies. It's Septemeber, which is weeks after school should have started. There are no football games. In my head, I'm like, "There is a marching band competition we need to get ready for next week. Do we need more bottled water?" But there's not and we don't, and it doesn't matter anyway because that is something that we are not a part of anymore and it's weird and strange and my mind has not adjusted yet. 

The high school did post out a "welcome back video". I watched the first part of it - the empty hallways and an aerial view of the campus and I had a visceral reaction. Like, I felt physically ill. I have PTSD. I'm not making light of PTSD. I have it. I am fucking traumatized. The school represents loss for me, in so many ways. I'm such a little bitch. I hate it so much. Like I should be able to see a aerial video of the school without feeling like my insides are going to fall out. Ugggh. 

But, I will be at the high school twice a day - dropping off and picking up my freshman. So, maybe that will get better. Maybe it will force me to feel my feelings and deal with them instead of burying them in my dark place. We'll see. 

Here is an actual picture of me dropping off my kid at school tomorrow: 

This is also the anniversary week of 09/11. Which still, 19 years later, shakes me to my core. We always talked about 09/11 with the kids. Especially as they got older, it was such a traumatic thing. We would tell them what life was like at that time. The fear, the uncertainty, the feeling that things would never be the same ever again. How can you translate that feeling that the world is ending to someone that has never experienced it before? But I don't have to now. Now they know that feeling. 

I have spent the past few months, purging and organizing my house. I was browsing through my high school yearbook and this page just did it to me: 

Doesn't that just make your heart stop?

My oldest will have to pick up her yearbook next week. They decided to publish it in the fall this year so that spring sports could be included. 

I am kind of afraid to see it. I'm going to look at it because I spent the $75 but it's going to be rough. PTSD things. 

But, we made it to September, and that has to count for something. We are going to Greenville at the end of the month. I have Airbnb credit. Fun fact - 1 night in Paris is the equivalent to a weekend in Greenville. My daughter will see her friends from the Governor's School. We'll go to Paris Mountain State Park and be in nature. I think it will be good for my soul. It will be nice to get far, far away from here where nothing triggers me.