Compartmentalizing

I'm beginning to see how well working, separated/divorced moms compartmentalize their lives. Or our lives, rather. No one could possibly feel everything we feel all the time and still get done all we need to get done. It just couldn't happen.

Yesterday, I was feeling gloomy all day. I couldn't shake the weepiness that hit me in yoga class this week, and I wanted to do nothing but curl up and disappear for a while. But I had to work last night, and before my event I had to pick up the little one and hand her off to a babysitter. Little did I know when I arrived at her school, I'd be greeted by her crying, bruised, and bleeding from a gash above her eye (she fell and hit it on a chair). Instantly, my gloominess evaporated as I kicked into mom mode and weighed whether she needed a trip to the Emergency Room (which she did not, thankfully), more ice, or just some snuggles. And after we had arrived home from school and I had her quietly resting, I finally stopped for a minute. Shit, I thought. She could have really been hurt. And I have to leave her tonight. With a babysitter.

And then I swallowed those thoughts.
And I handed her off to our babysitter.
And I went to talk to a room full of parents at work about financial aid for college.

Because we do what we have to do, us moms. We stuff emotions that threaten to choke and incapacitate us back into their little boxes so we have the room and energy to do the things we have to do to take care of the people who depend on us - all of them. Instinctively, this is what we do -without choice or second thoughts or regret.

Those emotions, though? Just in case you thought differently, they never stay in their box. In the darkness of midnight or the quiet of dawn, they show up, ruthlessly ripping me from my sleep. And today I'm no more sure of what to do with their residue than I was yesterday. I don't want to talk about them or share them. I don't want to analyze them or "work" on them. I just want to find something or someone that makes me not feel them and hold onto that something or someone as tightly as I can. Just for a little while. Just until the compartment that echoes with loneliness and sadness fills up with something else.