I just don't know HOW you do it!

The title of this may come across as somewhat snarky, but it isn't meant to be. It struck me that so many people (almost everyone I've ever known or met who knew about Hannah's death) have said to me in various ways over the last 20 months, that they just don't know how we do it -- having this incredible heartbreak, how do we manage to get up every day and live our lives?

I know that before this happened to me I was absolutely astounded that anyone could go on with life in any kind of everyday fashion after a loss of this magnitude. In fact, I still think that when I meet people who have had losses like ours or even greater.

One reason why we do get through every day despite this loss is that we do have so much else in our lives, good AND bad, that needs our energy and focus and love (or disgust in the case of Jon's employer!). The majority of this is Emily -- and I absolutely cannot imagine how we would be doing if for some reason we had either lost her, too, or just never had her. That is the only reason that I am sitting here now posting this. Without her we simply wouldn't be here, one way or another.

That's part of why it feels so bad to be having so much trouble coping with her -- she really is a gift, and I believe she is why we're alive and functional today as a family, and yet all I feel is resentful, inconvenienced, frustrated and bored. I love her desperately but right now I just don't like being a stay-at-home mother to a three-year-old.

Some of this is grief and depression, some of it may well be just plain burnout -- I've been doing this for over seven years now -- and I also miss my work. Not the being an employee part (let's just say Dilbert cartoons eerily parallelled most of my corporate work days), but I loved the work I did -- graphic design -- and want to find some way to get back into it without having to be away from Emily more than I need to.

I do know I'm beyond fortunate to even BE in a position where I'm bored and frustrated being a stay-at-home parent. I think of single mom friends I have, and realize it could be SO different and so much harder; that this is what I chose, and I need to find a way to make it work better for me AND my family.

And just in case this isn't complicated and self-pitying enough, get this: I feel slightly panicky at her starting preschool, even though I've counted down the SECONDS on bad days. It's going to be weird having three hours to myself (more or less) every weekday morning. I do find that it's when I *do* have complete "me" downtime that the sadness hits.

I have all kinds of things I want to do with that time -- exercise (stuff I like, not boring classes or anything), catch up on stuff around the house, work on a couple of freelance (emphasis on FREE) design projects, just hang out at the bookstore drinking foofy coffee drinks and reading People while my brain shuts down for a bit. But it sounds kind of empty anyway.