Recapturing "The Post That Wasn't"

Phew! I've been back online since 2 p.m. and eagerly reading blogs. It's good to be back ;) Now, on to the post...

As I was driving home on Saturday night (we left MD at 2:30 back to Philly where I dropped off K at the airport and then proceeded to a baby shower from which I left almost at 10 p.m.) and getting near our new region and neighborhood (which we love, BTW, but I don't think I'll get to blog about that, it'll be too painful) I started to feel unbearably sad. I was fine when we left, but being away for a few days and then driving back is like rubbing the wound and making it raw again. I also realized that the fact that I was by myself with the boys was part of the reason for feeling that way.

We got the "Very Bad News" on Oct. 31st and the next day I flew to Brazil. I returned on Sunday and that afternoon K flew to London. I got to spend the first ten days of grieving here, in this house, by myself with the boys. When he returned things got easier. We didn't talk too much about our feelings, we were dealing with practical things. I was sending out applications, he was figuring out new job possibilities. We were just "surviving," concentrating on the boys. I wasn't well, though. After I sent out the applications I just fell into a kind of stupor. I think I was/am mildly depressed. I am usually not very good (OK, make that pretty bad) at housekeeping, I'm a messy person and don't usually like to organize the house and although I'm a good cook, I'm usually lazy and don't prepare a full meal everyday. These past weeks I was terrible, though. I had no energy, no motivation to do anything. I just wanted to sleep in every morning (poor Linton, he gets so irritated at me, he keeps telling me "it's already day, it's not night anymore!!") and then be online a lot. I didn't even do any grocery shopping (that in itself is a subject for another discussion). K was quite upset at me and talked sternly to me about it.

Interestingly enough, I have been doing quite a bit now that I'm alone. Things that K didn't get to do (like starting to clean up the garage and unpack the toys in the basement and raking the leaves). Of course I have an extra motivation: I need to clean the house because my mother- & father-in-law are coming tomorrow with her sister & husband (they were supposed to be here tonight, but didn't make it), but still, I feel energized.

I know, it's strange -- at the same time that I feel that rawness returning I find all this energy that just wasn't here last week. I think I also did pretty OK in the 10 days while K was in England. Well... I wanted to continue in the "reflective" vein, but I just can't keep on going. I feel quite empty, and sad. Ups and downs, I know it's supposed to be that way.

You know what the hardest part of this whole "story" is?

We really don't know what we want to do with our lives.

We don't know where we want to live, whether we'd like to go back to Brazil (probably not, but at the same time we miss it), or where we'd like to live in the U.S. Sometimes we think about the different places where we're applying for jobs and I'm OK with several of them, but if I was asked to pick a place I really wouldn't know where to go.

I think we just don't want to have to decide. We want to be taken by the circumstances -- that's how it's been until now in our lives. (Of course there's a whole dimension of faith in our trajectory that I won't go into). Things have worked out really well. It's been a balance between circumstances and decisions and up until now we felt that everything had been working for the best. And I know that even this will be OK in the long run. It's just hard to be excited about the prospects since there are so many issues, so many questions involved. Yeah, I know you'd just run for shelter and quit reading if I were to explore every aspect of it, particularly the nuances of living as an expatriate, not quite knowing whether you should stay or go. Knowing full well that now you don't really fit in anywhere now. Yeah, like my friend Alice (no longer blogging, sniff, sniff :( ) used to say -- welcome to the "third culture kid" kind of life/mindset. It's hard to "become" (is there such a thing? there should be a new term for me) a TCK between ages 25-35, that I can tell! OK, enough for today.

P.S. the boys are sleeping in a tent in the living room. We set up three tents this afternoon for them to play. Fun. Maybe I'll post photos later. Kelvin's coughing, though :) Oh, after not really eating any proper food all day long (eating well -- another problem for skinny me in this juncture) I cooked some yummy soup tonight. Tomorrow will be a better day (make that a mantra).