A friend on Twitter posted this tweet this morning “It’s amazing just how restorative and re-centering a long weekend can be.”  I think the exact opposite.

I knew this weekend would be busy.  I knew I’d have 2 days of semi-rest and relaxation and 2 days of insanity.  What I didn’t know (can’t you hear the “dun dun dunnnnn” music right now?!) is all the lovely extras that would come with it.  Like what a phone call from my mother in law sharing she’d be going to Toronto for Christmas, after none of the in laws visited me as we had planned this summer, would do to me.  Or what  the after effects of visiting Baltimore for the first time since Kevin’s death would trigger.  Or how my smartphone dying and having to use the only other working phone, dead hubby’s phone, would whirlwind me into pictures of me and him in our happy life together would signal.  Or when the feelings of failure and inadequacy seep in at the very end of the weekend as I fed myself lines like “I’m no longer anyone’s number 1” and the devastation of how that would enlist helpless tears and cries to God.  Nope, didn’t anticipate all of that.

The fact that it’s Thanskgiving and my hormone levels are high are just the added bonus on top of all of that.

So this morning when I woke up to the alarm on Kevin’s phone – the alarm that instantly brought back memories of me waking up to him crawling out of bed and heading to work…when I woke up with puffy slanted eyes from crying…when I woke up with a weight of depressions where I went “God, do I need more therapy??” I felt quite helpless and beat up from the weekend.  Not at all restored or recentered.  I knew I hadn’t hoped for that, but I at least hoped that a few days of sleeping in would help.  They didn’t.

I rely on my busy routine.  I know when it’s going to make me tired or when I have something planned every night that I’m going to feel frustrated and over run.  I expect that.  The unexpected stuff is what ruins me.  It comes out of nowhere, it feels into everything I do and by the “end” of it I feel completely worthless as a woman, widow, daughter, girlfriend, aunt, sister, all of that.  I feel devalued in all that I do.  Incompotent to handle anything.

So this morning I sit here in the easy chair typing this, feeling bloated from too much food over the weekend, having a slight headache from last night’s crying, and facing a long day at work where I will be bored to tears.  I hope no more tears at the very least.  Why can’t I handle this?  Is it that it’s just happening all at once, or is it because I have not worked through things as well as I thought I had?  That last part makes me feel even more like a failure today.