The day is gray with the sorts of clouds that foretell migraines and possibly seizures. Not exactly my favorite kind of day, but the kind of day that is quite popular on the weather maps in Utah. Far more frequent than other kinds of days, especially in late February and the early parts of March and, oh look, it just happens to be that very kind of day today.
I woke up, saw the day outside my window, felt the tightened headband of awful wrapped around my head, attempted to make breakfast for those two big black dogs who insist that I'm the only one capable of making their breakfast, tried to hug my professor back when he hugged me tightly, resisted the urge to vomit on his toes, and then smiled weakly and stumbled back up the stairs toward the bed that we now share to hide back under the covers.
A little while later, at the insistance of those two big black dogs, both of whom had wrapped their heavy bodies of fur around either side of mine on the bed like special service agents to the delicate fairy keeping me pinned in just such a way so I could not possibly fly away, I crawled from under their bodies and the covers and holding myself against the wall stepped carefully back downstairs. The day, this day, is still full of threatening migraines and seizures and not any better than it was in the earliest morning hours of getting the small child off to school, but now it is just the professor who is getting himself off to school and me who is stumbling and mumbling and still trying not to vomit on his shoes.
I mention the impending migraine and how it's truly screwing with all the grand plans that I had for today. How there are still so very many things that need packing at my old condemned address. If not packing, at least the sorting and giving away. That today was going to be the day I emptied the entire kitchen. That was the plan.
He smiles at me and says, "Or you can go back to bed. Whichever ends up happening, it will be the right thing for today, don't you think?"
I think that I don't know how to answer that question. My professor rides off on his bicycle and I am left to figure out if there will be packing or sleeping or seizures.
A very long time ago, before there were two large black dogs in my life, and before there was a husband and before there was this blog, even, there was just one large black dog in my life and my entire life, every single thing, including all the things that the dog required, too, fit into a back pack. Our lives, our combined lives, fit together so very neatly.
It felt so simple. It also allowed me to disappear really easily. I can't tell you, honestly, how many times Clyde and I just walked out with the back pack, shut the door behind us without so much as a good-bye, and landed somewhere very, very far away in a very different zip code and figured out life all over again.
It was, honestly, not unlike Dorothy's trip in the tornado and landing in Oz and I know there's a strong compelling reason, a reason that runs deep within my own veins, that I wear glitter shoes and believe that I am a good witch on most days.
Disappearing can be quite the coping mechanism for those of us who fear abandonment the very most of all. If we disappear, you have to find us. You're the one who worries. We know where we are, but you can't leave me. I'm in charge and doing the leaving. Not the other way around.
It is just that, though. A coping mechanism that may not be the best and most healthy for you as you actually glue the broken bits of you back together. It may, in fact, eventually, leave you in a house that has actually been condemned by the city. There you are with two big black furry service dogs who require far more than a back pack for their own accoutrements and enough stuff to fill a moving van instead of the back of your car. Far more stuff than you can possibly easily cram into that same back pack that you still have from your disappearing act days with Clyde. If you crammed, you could fit enough for one dog and the clothes you would need for the beaches of Mexico, because you've been thinking this through carefully, but for two dogs and you, crammed, you need more than that back pack and your heart strings are now entwined with his, with your professor's, braided in a way that might tug more strongly and tear in ways that will snap and truly ache in ways you've not experienced before when you've vanished without a goodbye. This makes the disappearing just a little more difficult, the packing more agonizing, the contemplation more maddening.
The boxes, each and every one of them, as I pack them and stack them, terrify me. It's my very own definition of crazy, I know. Gratitude and love is packed, certainly, in every box, too. I have a safe place to go. It is just that small agonized voice, the little squeaky one that has always been there, the one who will never, ever actually go away, that keeps screeching, "He'll leave you, so you go first!"
I really and truly love my professor. I also really love his son. I know that this love is a gift and worth fighting even my own most powerful demonic voices to make myself stay. I'm doing my very best to not click my glittered heels and just disappear.
