Loaded Love and a Dash of Permission

I love Christmas.  I love the sights and sounds and food and decorations and merriment.  I love the tree and the presents and time spent at home with family.  I love egg nog and walking in the cold and Christmas songs.  But I also know that the things I love also make the Christmas season a loaded season.  Loaded with emotions both good and bad.  Loaded with stress and commitments and rushing here and there.  Loaded with expenses and chores and endless things to remember to do at specific times.  Loaded with wine and food and stomach aches.

I should have known going into 3 days at home with 3 kids that there was going to be some low lows.  I've never been the stay-at-home mom type despite my original idea of how my life would go.  I like things to be ordered and quiet mostly and also clean.  I also like to control my surroundings and having 3 kids running around makes all of these things pretty much impossible.  Add cancer to the mix and it's a whole other level of lack of coping skills.  I have surgery in a week and a half and Christmas day with family here and Santa and excessive joy and memories to execute.  I needed to concentrate and focus and be left to tackle my to-do list.  I should have known today was going to suck because none of that was going to be possible.  

I woke up feeling crappy both physically and emotionally and adding that feeling crappy to not having the house cleaned as originally planned because my aunt who cleans was down with the flu just threw me over.  I was down right inconsolable for most of the morning.   I was reminded that just one little thing can collapse me right now.  I was super overwhelmed with the house to clean, the presents to secretly acquire (bought but all collected in a giant bucket at work), the kids to care for and also a prescription to pick up, drycleaning to drop off and about 3 hours of office stuff to cram in. 

Normally I'm extremely capable.  On an average day I do a zillion tasks and execute everything according to my high expectations.  Not being able to do that right now is killing me even if the cancer isn't.  I am just not able to keep it together and so I spent most of the afternoon realizing that dirty floors aren't going to ruin Christmas but my bad mood certainly will.  

I spent a lot of today telling myself to suck it up and that it could be worse and when I finally let go and let myself feel shitty and awful and sad things immediately got better.  Crying in the hallway while the kids played felt really great.  I'm not sure what it all means but I do know that it certainly felt better than telling myself to get over it.   A bit of permission to feel crappy went a long way and so instead of finding gratitude today I found sadness and that's ok.  I'll allow it if it will let me get to the joy faster.  It was also a great lesson that sometimes people need to hear "ya that totally sucks" instead of "you have so much to be grateful for!" - note to self.   

The countdown is on to Christmas morning around here and letting myself go to the dark place today brought in the light...this loaded lovely time might just be dark and light this year and I'm giving myself permission to embrace both - I hope my nearest and dearest allow me the same.

Darkness and Light