This past weekend someone had asked me how I was doing. This question is one of those common questions you get in conversations and is usually followed by just a casual response of either ‘I’m good’ or ‘I’m fine’ and the conversation moves on. This person had meant something more than just the common question leading to the casual response. He wanted to know how I was truly doing. Not with the kids. Not on a day-to-day basis. But how I was doing mentally and emotionally now being two years out from losing Erik. It took me a little by surprise because I was just so used to responding with ‘I’m fine’ or ‘I’m not okay, but I will be’. It made me stop for a few seconds and really think about not only how I wanted to respond, but how I, just I, was truly doing internally. It has been a while since I’ve even thought about just myself and my feelings. Being a solo parent leaves very little room for me to think much about anything else aside from surviving, and surviving with twins. I had been on top of my therapy during mid-February through the dreaded month of March, but have since then fallen back off as life again had gotten in the way. I feel like I have been suppressing so much of my feelings and how I’ve personally been doing because, by the time I have a chance to catch my breath from trying to keep two little souls and myself alive, it leaves very little room mentally and emotionally to try to tackle the enormity of the feelings of what reality is now. So those couple seconds I needed to take made me realize I had not thought about how I’d truly been doing in some time. That question normally makes me think about how exhausted I felt every day. How overwhelming it is to be the sole parent to two toddlers. How all the worries about their future, our future would be. How much I worry that I wouldn’t be enough for them or give enough or teach enough. That normally makes me think of that. Of them. And of how just surviving each day was not only physically tiring but mentally and emotionally as well.
This time, this question from this person forced me to think differently. To focus on me, not them for once. And there was my answer. I don’t know. That’s what came to mind. I didn’t know how I felt. I didn’t know how I was truly doing. I haven’t had the time to really think about it I guess. And in that moment it would take more than a couple of seconds to figure it out. So all I was able to answer with was, ‘I truly don’t know’. I knew I missed Erik like I always have since he passed. I knew I was lonely, yet knowing the only company I wanted was him. I knew I felt like I couldn’t survive this life without him, yet here we are two years later. But I still didn’t know, even to this day, how to answer that question when it’s strictly about me. How do I truly know how I’m doing when I don’t even know what I need to fully accept this reality?
