From the Edge of Dementia

So I took that bath I said I was going to take earlier and it turned out to be a little different than I expected.   I expected to slip down into the water and feel comforted.  Instead, I sat down in the water and felt extremely vulnerable.   Within a few seconds of getting in I started to cry and it was a good one.  I hadn't realized how much I'd been holding in that needed to be purged.   With the fan running and the water running I had all the sound proofing I needed to really let go and I did. 

The last time I did this was on a morning in late July  2003 in my apartment in Nashville.  It was the morning of Skip's funeral.  I woke up extremely early (having not really slept at all) and ran water into the tub (man, I really miss that tub...).   I got into the water and began sobbing as I had never done before, tears hitting the water like rain.  For nearly an hour I sat in there unable to do anything but what I was doing.  And when the tears finally subsided and I had soaked in a sort of trance for a bit, I got out, got dressed, headed to the funeral home and spent the next 10 hours being stalwart for everyone else who was devastated by this event.  I held people while they cried.  I greeted people outside.  I was a pillar of strength that day.  Had I not spent that hour in the bathtub before hand, I may well have displayed a different demeanor.

So back to today... the tears once again falling like rain.  But the purge was good.  And, other than the damn headache I get when I cry like this, I did feel tremendously better when I got out.  I was in good spirits when the Raven's game started and Pop and I enjoyed the first half.  But all that crying also exhausted me and by the second half I was laying on his bed watching the game.  I saw exactly two plays and then next thing I know Pop was yelling and asking how many minutes were left in the game (something he does constantly after the two minute warning).   I had been out like a rock.  

Now it's almost time to put the Popster in bed for the evening and my emotions are starting to cycle back down again (not to mention, it's really cold down here) so I'm considering taking another bath after I get him down.   I think this one will be more of the relaxing nature.  Back during a particular horrible period in my life when I lived in Canada I sometimes took 3 or 4 baths a day (which is saying a lot because the water on our farm was so brown, I couldn't see my body once in it).   The point is, it's a place I can go to heal and I don't have to leave the house to do it.  

|  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this

• #1 Comment from deshelestraci 
  12/10/06 9:23 PM | Permalink

  There you go!  Sounds like some good healing.  I didn't realize that your husband has been gone such a short amount of time.
  Traci