Pre-Empty Nest Syndrome
Usually at a point like this, I would turn to the demi-god of Lindt or Toblerone and seek comfort. I don’t do emotions, well not ones that hurt. Not ones that make your mascara run or your green eyes red (although for colour blind people that would be good right?) See how easily I can distract myself when it comes to emotions, look a bird… a colour blind bird…
OK seriously, my sadness is heavy and raw. Why does no one tell you the roller coaster of emotions you will feel when your children grow up? Why does no one warn you of the sorrow you feel? Yes, there is joy, the joy of being able to shower without someone whining pitifully outside the door when you are missing for five minutes, with dad holding the baby up to the steamy shower door to show her that you are not gone. Why do I now want to stand outside her bedroom door and check that she has not grown that five minutes older that allows her to leave, finish and be done with her childhood? Leave it discarded on the floor like a wet towel? I want to yell “Pick up your childhood! Don’t leave it on the floor where I can trip over it!”
In truth, I am tripping over it and so is she, as we battle to hold onto it hard, when the wind of young adulthood is tugging the kite of her childhood right out of our hands.
What does that mean? Lately, we have railed over tiny things, her and I, who never really argue, we have made mountains out of silly arguments because neither of us want to face the elephant in the room, that she is no longer a tiny girl, whose hand slots around my fingers as we cross a road; that she no longer has a heavy, fuzzy head that falls with a weight into my hands as I look down and feed her.
We have argued hard about tiny things, things that never were an argument before because we can’t acknowledge the one thing that is wounding us both, that this is done. That we will transition to a new space. And when we are done snivelling and asserting ourselves, we have a cup of tea and smile at each other. We sit on the bed and giggle at how silly we are. We have battled for a new more equal relationship and while it still feels like strange and foreign land, it is the beginning of the next stage forged in tears, not unlike her birth. We have a sense of anticipation and beauty that we both know we will rise to, but in the meantime, we forge our way to this new equilibrium, sometimes with tears, sometimes with laughter.
Recent Comments