anxiety

Dylan and I spent a couple of days up north this week, beautiful days with sunsets and floating on the water and poking around in little shops. However, we went from Monday to Wednesday, and now my body refuses to understand what day of the week it is. Summer always gets tricky when you work in a school, because days fade into each other, and I can do things during the week that normally get saved until weekends. This time, though, I can’t shake the feeling that my days just aren’t right.

Maybe it’s because my birthday (and birthday dinner) fell on a Thursday, and we ate late, so it felt more like a Friday. Now we are getting ready for a pool party with friends, but I can’t force my brain to understand that it truly is Saturday and not Sunday.

None of this is a huge deal, at least not until I have to start going back to work, except there are things that need to be done. I consult my calendar and planner more times than I should need to each day, and I’m triple checking alarm clock times before drifting off to bed. I wake up feeling like I missed something, even though I know I didn’t.

To be honest, it’s probably a bit of back-to-school/work anxiety creeping into my head. We’re tiptoeing into the BTS waters with trips to the mall, this year’s emergency contact updates, and glancing at school supply lists. Both kids get their class schedules for the year next week. Understanding the why doesn’t make it any less disconcerting. All I can do is keep double checking my lists and try to breathe myself back into the present.

It’s a reminder, I think, that all of the planning in the world doesn’t always help when things don’t feel right. All of the checklists and reminders can’t give me control of the things that are out of my control. I don’t like that feeling. I’m trying to sit with it, but my stomach still twists and turns and keeps me awake some nights. I hope as our schedules settle into place, so do my nerves.

I don’t love my birthday. It comes at a weird point in the summer for someone who goes back to work in the fall, a time when it’s too early to really feel ready to shift seasons but too late to feel like I’m still luxuriating in summer. It feels even stranger this year, because we’re creeping up on the anniversary of my mom’s diagnosis. Last year, the kids and I celebrated her birthday with her in Brighton, and that might have been the last real normal family celebration we had.

The kids made me cards (I will frame Abbey’s, filled with beautifully colored drawings) and Ryan found one that’s seriously perfect for us, even though he doesn’t love cards. He, Abbey, and I went to see Barbie while Dylan was in karate, which was probably the right choice for him. We had a fun dinner together, fake playing pub trivia and eating one of my favorite pizzas.

It still felt uncomfortable, and I feel unsettled and uncomfortable today. I ran this morning and did laundry and got most of my to-do list done. I shouldn’t feel like this, but I do. I’m not sure why contentment feels out of reach lately. I wanted to use this summer to re-set from a truly impossible year, with the knowledge that another, even more impossible year will come at some point. No matter how well Mom is doing right now, at some point, all of the chemo in the world won’t be enough to stop the cancer from spreading.

Maybe that’s why I’m having a hard time with my birthday wishes this year, even harder than normal. I’m not sure what to wish for anymore, since time only moves forward, and the past, when things were a little easier, can’t be tread upon again.

I wasn’t sure I wanted a cake this year, with wishes clogged behind fear and complete ridiculousness. We got one today instead, and I still have a couple of hours before finalizing my wishes for the upcoming year. If nothing else, I hope I feel a little more grounded when I wake up tomorrow morning, during the second day of my forty-sixth year.