I have been fighting tears for several days now. On the verge, feeling them well up, and swallowing them back down. But there has been no time to cry. I have a nine-month-old who is teething and had a tough time with our journey to Ireland in the last 24 hours. I have a baby developing in my belly who is starting to make me nauseous every day. And I have a husband who was more ready than I to leave to New York and could not share in my melancholy.
The last 24 hours have been filled with exhaustion, bickering, no AC in airports or planes, dehydration, back pain and ridiculous British regulations designed to upset my baby. The trip here was physically and emotionally taxing. This is supposed to be a vacation, but serenity eludes me just yet. I haven't been able to process leaving New York, the best home I have ever had (the only place that ever felt like home to me actually). I feel unmoored, unhinged, uprooted. It's hard to feel myself being here when I seem to be stuck in an out-of-body-experience.
I want to feel present. I want to live in the moment. But I am struggling to process so much that I can't process anything at all. I've gone numb.
Maybe it's because I've been awake for several nights in a row. Maybe it's because I have, until a few hours ago, been consumed with the packing up of our lives in New York. Or perhaps it was just too many goodbyes. Some were harder than I ever expected.
I want to desperately have a day in bed pulling the covers over my head and having myself a good cry. I want to sleep in a quiet room. I want to eat a meal slowly. I want a massage to ease the throbbing pain in my back. Things have happened so fast in my life it feels like I have a fifty-two car pileup of emotions. It's going to take some time to sort through and clean up the rubble.
Day 4 in Ireland:
The fog has lifted. My goodbye to New York and my friends still seems incomplete, but my urge to fly back to the city for a do-over has dissipated. All those things that my husband was doing that was making pick fights with him are more clearly enveloped in the hormone induced and lack of sleep haze that existed rather than the absolute clarity I was insisting I had. Not all of them, but many of them. These pregnancy hormones really are nasty some days.
Our son has adjusted easily to the time change and, with the exception of getting frustrated with being worn all the time instead of being in his stroller, he is happy, laughing, and flirting up a storm (our stroller was finally found and arrived at the hotel yesterday!)
The weather is cool (which I love) and the air is clean. The people of very friendly and there are bagels around every corner and smoke salmon abound. Did jews invade the Eire?
We have been staying outside of Dublin the last few days and today we will venture through the Wicklow Mountains to our rented home that has no address, only coordinates. The directions we received to the house read something like this:
Look for the house with thatched roof and the green door. Hang a left. When you are between a pub on wither side of the street, look for the vegetable stand hidden begin the old tree about 50 yards to the left and make a right after you pass the vegetable stand.
Talk about going to a place to be unplugged!
No indian food to be delivered on nights I don't want cook. How will I survive??? I am sure, just fine. I am armed with a new Vegan recipe book and a gourmet kitchen and fresh vegetables from the surrounding farms.
The fog has lifted, and although I am still sorely lacking in sleep, the hormones are still wrecking havoc, and the first trimester nausea is settling in, today, I am feeling pretty darn good.
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