The emotional toll I took yesterday is lingering and I find it hard to shake my sympathies for my coworkers pain and my worried that her pain might become my pain some day.
I’m finding it hard to smile or to laugh and my friends, all going through their own small frustrations and sufferings, are unable to pull me out of this whole and I, in turn, am unable to help them too. And that’s okay. They don’t owe me emotional support on demand and I don’t owe them the same. We have to suffer silently sometimes. We all have to learn to self-sooth.
Today I’m choosing to put my headphones in and let music carry me to other moods. I’ve got my calendar out and I’m filling it up with some writing ideas. It’s looking pretty bare but perhaps one or two pieces a month is all I can, or should, ask from myself.
I’m looking forward to going home and being with my wife. She need not cheer me up and I don’t expect her to say the right things or the one thing that will get me out of it. She doesn’t need to do anything to comfort or cheer me. She just has to exist in the same general space as me and suddenly the world, and I, and right again.
Lisa Marie Blair 