We are officially one week away from our big important trip to the NIH.
That pretty much means that now is the time to stop procrastinating, and put it into focus. I have to pack. And prepare. Mentally and physically.
I’ve never flown with 3 kids before. Actually, I’ve only ever flown with one kid at a time. So…that’ll be hard and stressful.
We have to book our transportation from the airport we’ll be flying into to The Children’s Inn. I have to order all of our lunches in advance.
I have to figure out how the fuck all 5 of us, a 7 year old, a 5 year old, and a 15 month old are supposed to all share 1 room. Especially when one of those people, me, doesn’t go to sleep until midnight. And a different two of them like to wake up and scream at 4am. So…that should all be really just so interesting. And oh so fun.
As if all of that wasn’t enough to occupy the space in my brain…there’s just so much more.
To be honest, the adoption thing is kind of brutal right now. As in, how I feel about it. This is the time of year where I start to feel all of my feelings about it…and this year is proving to be waaaaay harder so far. There are a lot of factors going into why that is, but this isn’t the post for that. Trust me, that will come.
It’s also my oldest (parented) son’s birthday tomorrow. He will be 7. It’s the first time he’ll have experienced a birthday in school. And I’ve spent the past week trying to fill out the papers that his school has for birthdays. The “birthday story”. As it turns out, it’s really hard thinking of the positive highlights of each year of his life when his life has been mostly…pain and trauma and doctors and blah. At least from perspective.
Tonight is therapy. And honestly? I think I could probably sit there for 4 hours and not run out of things to talk about and work through.
Everything is just so, so heavy right now. I’m doing my best to support everyone in the ways that they need, but I won’t lie. I think every single night this week I’ve had a breakdown and cried about something. Usually because of my birth son. Or my overwhelming feelings of guilt and anxiousness about this whole NIH trip.
Tonight will be hard. Therapy will be hard. I’m going in with a handful of really hard topics that I know I can no longer avoid. Specifically, I need my therapist to force the door open on the things I want and need to talk about…but avoid because they’re hard and scary.
And then I’ll have to come home, after feeling emotionally depleted and drained, and spend the rest of the night blowing up balloons and decorating for my sons birthday so he can wake up in the morning and feel special and loved and celebrated and all that bullshit. I mean yay, birthdays!
Honestly, I hate birthdays. I always have. They are really hard on me. I don’t know if it’s because I’m so much of an introvert that they just drain me soo much, or because of the trauma of adoption or whatever…I don’t know. But whatever it is…they’re just hard.
I’m glad I have therapy tonight. It’ll be the last time before we leave for our trip. Which, frankly, really sucks.
But I’ll take what I can get.
And I should probably start packing.