How Easily I Regress

This last Sunday, I snapped, and poor Asher got the brunt of me reaching my end point. Asher and Harper were playing on the couch sometime after nap. I had forgotten to put my glass of water away, and before I could intervene, Asher was drinking from it and then Harper. Harper soon hit herself in the mouth with it and dumped water on the couch. Without hesitating, I appropriated the glass and took it to the kitchen, taking deep breaths and hoping for a minute to cool down because the whole events with my glass had me a bit frustrated (mostly because I forgot to put it away).

My calming was quickly interrupted by a loud thump and crying from Harper. Returning to the living room, I found Asher back on the couch, laughing, and Harper on her stomach on the floor, crying. I picked up Harper to soothe her and then found myself yelling at Asher, "It's not funny! It's not funny!" As soon as Asher's face crumpled, and he started to cry, I knew I had so poorly handled my stress and fatigue. You'd think that I would have a better idea of where I was on the stress scale based on the three cold sores that were healing on my lip and the sore state of my back.

I apologized profusely to Asher and was especially conscious about my words and level of activity for the rest of the day, reserving energy for the basics (like actually being kind to my dear children). Rolling along and I wake up Tuesday with two more cold sores (that's five in about a week, and I haven't had a cold sore for about five months) and a neck on the verge of kinking. With a slightly wrong move Friday morning, my neck was officially kinked.

I imagine my heart and soul banging on the door to my mind, "Hey! Let us in! Hello! You're stressed! Can you not even hear us?! Let's have a minute here because . . . this is all so monumental!" But I had regressed, regressed to pretending I was fine, that I could be "happily divorced," that I had energy to finish all the work and volunteer projects I had undertaken, that I was okay not taking time to release the grieving energy at work over the local teacher killed in a car accident, that I had any energy left after a week of being home (which I really did love) without relief from Michael, who was out of town and out of touch for four days, or daycare, which was closed due to Alisa being on vacation.

I went to a yoga class this morning, and it met all my expectations of being absolutely perfect and lovely and a place to let my mind, heart and soul relax and reconnect. I love the aesthetics of yogic language - child's pose, warrior pose, exulted hero pose (yes!), tree pose, sun salutation - and feeling how my body can bend and not bend and balance in tree pose, solid, connected.