Goodnight, Moon

I am having another restless night. Not so much sleepless, I just happened to sleep too much in the early part of it. I awoke in the wee hours and am fully rested, so here I am wide awake while the rest of my world is fast asleep. I am not completely distraught at having been awakened by my own thoughts. Some parts of this, this sleepless wrangling with my thoughts is good. I enjoy the quiet, the necessary nothingness, so I can gather myself into a place a conscious thoughtfulness, a place of centered mindfulness, versus the scattered, somewhat manic paced daylight, where I am running mentally all day long. I am worried, a useless emotion that garners nothing more than an anxious physiological response versus a mentally stable one. It wears me out wondering where will live a year from now, wondering which direction to point our family in order to find a place to call home. My kids and I have been talking recently about rolling consequences. The discussions have been about how as an adult how karmic experiences as a grown up last so much longer than those of a child. Make a mistake as a child and the punishment is usually swift and temporary. Make a sizable mistake as an adult and the consequences can come in waves rolling over you for possibly years. I think we, as parents, try and teach our children to avoid the big life altering mistakes that lead directly to regret, but unfortunately, much of the time we realize that our children have to figure out at least part of it on their own. It's a parent's heartbreak watching children make mistakes we know will haunt them for awhile. It is in those times I back off the punishment side of parenting because I know the world will punish them enough. We, as a family have not faced some of the traumatic events that can rip apart a child and their dreams, but still we have seen our fair share of the ugly side of learning. While I talk to my children, who now are not really children at all, we talk about our futures. We have to acknowledge that at some time, in the not so distant future, we will split apart and live in different parts of the country. One is planning a move back north, one is planning a move further west in Texas, one is planning a move across town about 45 minutes away, and Michael, well, he is headed away from everyone. This is not what I had ever thought would happen, while I was raising my kids, being fractured into multiple parts, like this. When my kids were small, I had thought we might live near each other and spend holidays together. I had thought I would be rocking grandchildren on my front porch. Now, I don't even own that porch and live in another state. It's a bit funny, how much life changes as the years pass. As a rational being I know for a fact that worrying will garner me nothing positive, but I am afraid, I am unable to make it all go away. For the most part, I live everyday much as I have always done, treating things as they come, doing triage to take care of my family of 6. Sometimes, I get stuck in the web of my own thoughts wondering how this will all turn out. I have no control. That is my primary thought these days. I have no control. My son and I were talking about drinking. Wait, I have a point here. He and I were discussing how neither of us likes the out of control feeling of alcohol. There is this really unsettling gut feeling about getting drunk, about not having control over your own body, mind and emotions that keeps us sober. The other thing we talked about was how much trust you have to have with the people you are with when you are smashed. Neither of us has ever been comfortable putting our fate in someone's hands. We laughed while we both admitted to having trust issues. For us, it is better to handle our own affairs, than to discover we have put our faith in the wrong people. The tie in here is that it is the lack of control. My kids think I am a control freak, just ask them, and they will gladly tell you about all of my rules, advice, questions, blah, blah. Yeah, they are not wrong, but I will say in my defense that I have experienced the rolling consequences of trusting the wrong people. Ooh, there are the ugly trust issues again, but rather than to try and control everything, I try and control things I think are imperative to our well being. Remembering there are 6 of us, most of my day is putting out fires. The paper work alone for 6 adults is enough to deplete an entire forest. The worry for me is mostly how we will all do, when we are not together anymore. While I remain confident that we will survive living apart, in different cites, in different states, spread out like peanut butter, I wonder how happy we will be. Cognitively I know there is no "they all lived happily ever after" without the conscious mindset to make it so, but will we have the strength? Will we be able to maintain it? I have no control. My alarm just went off. It's time for me to get up. I think that is apropos for this blog. I do think it is time for me to get up; up from being down too long, up from being dragged down by the worry.

I think it's time for me to get up, way up, and find a way to stay there, at least for as long as I have been down.