Sick days

Sick days aren’t sick days anymore. As grateful as I am for Telehealth services and the opportunity to meet people over a screen, I wish a sick day was simply that, a sick day. I am feeling tired. I didn’t sleep well last night. My eyes are heavy. My kids and I received our results today, that we are all Covid positive and all I want to do is lay in bed and sleep. Along with my eyes, my heart is heavy. Weighted down by all of the sadness that I can’t seem to shake this week. Some days, weeks, months, are worse than others and this week just seems to be impossible to come up for air, or clear my mind of this nagging feeling.

I often wonder why life and love have to be so complicated. You meet someone, you fall in love, and you hope that it all works out and when it doesn’t it’s devastating. Each and every time it rips you wide open and regardless of the lesson it hurts. What I am navigating now is not something that I have ever experienced before. It is distinct, it is unique, it is a first. I have had relationships end and I move on. I don’t look back and I don’t wonder. I seem to be unable to move on from this and while I have reached a place of acceptance about that, it is hard to wrap my head around the fact that right now, I miss her. Right or wrong, that is what I feel. And I swore that I wouldn’t use this platform for this but where else do I put it? My internal struggle is as relevant as any adventure I may embark on, if not more, isn’t it?

I’m on an adventure right now. Sick, with a virus that has killed so many people. A virus that almost took my parents lives and one that now is afflicting my own kids. This adventure is one that reminds me of the things that I am missing. The warmth of a partner to wrap myself around because I feel like shit and only, she will do. I can manage a lot of things alone. I can make myself a meal, go out to eat, grocery shop, sleep, anything really but there are some moments in time that I admittedly need the warmth of another human to feel safe and taken care of. The feeling of someone else’s warmth. That person who regardless of a test result can’t stand to be away from you for a moment because they need you just as much as you need them. There is something so necessary about that.

It has been some time since that has been a thing and thankfully, I am not sick that often that I land in a space where I am craving the warmth of another to feel better but if I am being honest, it is not just in sickness that I am seeking that. I didn’t realize how much I missed being near someone I’m in love with until it was no longer accessible. I have acquired a new appreciation for the sanctity, integrity and critical importance of healthy partnership and the role I play in that. Reminding myself that managing my triggers, and assuming positive intention of my partner was and will always be my responsibility. I had lost sight of that for so long because I spent so much time blaming and being angry at everyone else. It took a lot of loss to understand what my responsibility to other was and how my anger is never about anyone but me. How long was I going to stay angry though? Anger didn’t get me anywhere. It prevented me from showing up for my partner in the ways that was needed to have a healthy relationship.

I wish I didn’t need to learn things the hard way. I wish that it didn’t take a series of failed relationships to recognize my toxic traits, my abusive patterns. I am hopeful though that in the future when the opportunity to engage in a healthy, loving relationship does come my way that I take the lessons I’ve learned in this life. I had looked at so much as a waste of time. That time was wasted when I wasn’t getting my way with something. I wanted, what I wanted in that moment and I didn’t care what I had to do to get that. What ended up happening is that I hurt the people that I love and I lost the person that I had professed my love to. I behaved in a manner unbecoming of someone claiming they loved someone and what’s worse is that I wanted to place blame rather than hold myself accountable. I wanted what I wanted outside of accountability and that would have never yielded anything healthy for either of us. Asking the person, you love to bend themselves into a pretzel to make me feel comfortable regardless of how they felt or what they needed was a cardinal sin and an ultimate betrayal. I was asking her to abandon herself for me. Neither loving or appropriate to ask of the person you love.

I started this post off acknowledging that I miss her. I’d be lying to myself if I said otherwise. I am done lying to myself, lying to the world about where I am in my process, and more importantly gaslighting myself out of my own experience. Life is a series of events. Some lead us to happy endings, some lead us to lessons learned and other leave us wondering. It is in the wonder that I remain committed to pursuing my highest self, whomever that may end up being. There is no end date to my growth and more importantly is that I am committed to modeling the work, not just reading or studying about it. I will use wonder as a motivator to keep growing. I will not give up hope that life will lead me down the path that I am intended to be on. I will never again reject life’s subtle and not so subtle redirections. I will forever embrace change. You never know when change will bring you love. And love is all I am seeking now.