Cruel Summer

It is time to write. Something. Anything.

It has been hard for me to write over the past few weeks. Postpartum depression can be a real bitch.

I used to love to write when I was dealing with depression and hard things in life. I don’t anymore. I’m pretty sure it is due to the intense desire that I have been feeling to just escape…and if I were to sit down and write about the hard things going on right now – like the difficulties of depression, how difficult Ryan has been since the baby was born, the problems Pete and I are facing as a couple, the sudden negative and isolating changes in my friendships or the unpleasant return of my anxiety – I wouldn’t be able to use my precious and rare alone time to escape all that by watching back to back episodes of The Big Bang Theory, now would I?

But I need to write anyway. So here I am.  

I have been in a bit of a fog yesterday and today, as my hometown of Prescott is mourning the tragic loss of nineteen firefighters. I knew three of them from high school, one of them since elementary school. I knew the older sister of one of them and performed with her in choir for two years. I knew a girl who is married to the cousin of another one.  And I knew one of the grieving widows very well when I was a young teenager. She and her family were in my ward, and she and I spent a lot of time together in Young Women and Seminary activities. The part that is stabbing at me today is that I was always a little jealous of her - she was beautiful, popular, the boys liked her, and she was incredibly kind - and I envied her. Then this morning...I watched her try to hold it together on national television while being interviewed on the Today Show, talking about her fallen husband and her four very small children...and all I could do was cry for her. My heart hurt for her. And it hurt even more when I remembered my stupid and juvenile jealousy. I found myself wishing so badly that I was back home so that I could find a way to help her, to help her babies, or to help any of the other eighteen widows. I cannot help but think of how grateful I am for my husband and for the fact that he comes home to me every night.  He wanted to become a firefighter once (actually I think he's still technically on the ridiculous waiting list for the FD academy in Chicago), but instead he works in front of a computer screen and comes home to me every night. I know how it feels to worry. I was an Army wife many years ago. My brother served two tours in Iraq. And when I was a teenager I suffered from horrible nightmares about him being killed while he was working in law enforcement.  I remember the worry.  Which makes me even more humbled and grateful for the fact that my husband and my brothers are all safe tonight while nineteen other men never made it home. The whole thing is surreal and hard to swallow...because the truth is that you never know when your entire life could change. And that's a hard thing to be reminded of.

We spent seven days in Phoenix last month, and I was very strongly reminded of how right our decision to move to Utah was, and continues to be. Despite how far we are from Ryan's grandparents (the only thing we actually miss about AZ), every minute I spent in that metropolis-of-death-heat reminded me of how miserable we were there and all of the reasons we did not want Ryan to grow up there. I encountered a lot of memories while I was there - some good, most bad - and I don't think they served my current emotional battles very well.  But the silver lining was how amazing it felt to come home. With pretty much every vacation I have ever taken, I always dreaded going home at the end, and once I was home, I was usually pretty unhappy about it.  But when we made it back from our 12 day trip (we spent time in Prescott and Vegas after we left Phoenix), I was so happy to be here. When I walked through the front door, I actually felt like I was home, and that has been a hard thing for me to feel for almost a decade. Now we just gotta work on making a butt load of money so that we can fly Ryan back and forth to Grandma and Grandpa's house whenever he wants...but that might be harder to accomplish.

It is July already. Never in my life has time gone by so fast as it has over the past six months.  After spending so many miserable summers in Phoenix where it was too hot to do anything, and then spending my first Utah summer battling HG (puking my guts out and not being able to do anything fun), I was really looking forward to this summer with Ryan.  I had images of backyard BBQ's, sidewalk chalk, swimming, playing in the sprinklers, hanging out with friends, outdoor movies and swinging on our new backyard swing after dark...but somehow between traveling, postpartum depression, and a child who is either consistently grounded or spending all his time at his best friend's house across the street, we've done hardly any of those things and the summer is already halfway over.  I feel like time is just slipping between my fingers and I don't even have a chance to make all the memories I want to make with my babies before they're grown. Maybe that's just the hormones talking and everything will be easier next summer? I hope so. And I hope I can figure out a way to make the most of the remaining weeks we have before the harsh winter hits us again.

I will wrap this up with a couple photos that makes my heart smile, because, well, I need it. 

I love my babies. I love my hottie husband. And I'm looking forward to better days.