Tonight was one of those calm relaxing PERFECT nights. I dropped Josh off at school and met my sister, Sarah, at Sweet Tomatoes for a girls night. This is our favorite restaurant and the place we go every time we go out. Good food, good company it couldn't have been better.
Sarah is one of those people that is easy to talk to about anything. She's open and warm and non-judgemental and something about her just makes me spill my guts every time I see her. Sometimes I don't even have guts to spill but somehow I can sit in a restaurant with her for 2 hours, talk about anything and everything and not even realize we've been there more than 5 minutes.
Tonight we were talking about husbands being gone and how it's hard to adjust to them coming home. I told her that I'm starting to get nervous about having Josh be home all night with me. She related and then we talked more about trouble adjusting and transitioning. It turns out that from the time you are a baby (like 2 months old) one of the few "personality traits" that you can identify is trouble transitioning. The more we talked about it, the more I realized that I have that issue.
She talked about her son who doesn't like to be surprised with things. He likes having a plan and if you throw him for a loop in it (even if it's a good loop) he whines and doesn't like it. I started to kindof laugh, and then realized I do that. I think I make Josh crazy with my constant need to know what we're doing next. I can't enjoy what's happening now if I don't know how it's going to end and the next thing will begin.
Even last week, when Josh surprised me with a fun park date, I just kept asking what we were doing next. I had fun, and it was a fantastic idea, but I couldn't stop thinking about what was next. Sometimes I'm even crazy about it enough to have to know how we will drive somewhere. Josh will take a "different" (read: wrong) turn and I immediately panic. "Where are we going? I thought you were taking me to work. Why are you taking this road instead of the road we normally take?" It drives Josh crazy, and I think I'm a horrible nagging passenger, but I feel really uncomfortable when I don't know what's going to happen next. I don't even like going to restaurants I'm not familiar with because I don't like not knowing how it works.
Not only small transitions bother me, but big ones are sometimes worse. Josh going back to school was emotionally trying for me. Him coming back home is already starting to be hard. Making decisions about changing jobs, moving, committing to a new schedule in anything is scary to me. I like to just do what I did yesterday. I like consistency. I like knowing that tomorrow will be the same as today was.
The best part of all of this crazy talk is that Sarah relates and makes me feel like it's fine to be crazy. "So you know that transition is difficult for you, and you avoid situations that you don't like. When it's unavoidable, you act carefully." She says it like it's no big deal. I have a tendency to over exaggerate things and think it's the end of the world. She has a tendency to realize that life is just the way it is, and knowing is half the battle.
After a fantastic dinner and soothing conversation, I headed home to go on a walk before time to pick up Josh. My mom used to have this magnet on the fridge that was a picture of a chick (like baby chicken, not like girl) and it said "a good friend is cheaper than a therapist". I now get it, I thought I got it before, but now I can really see it. The world would be a better place if more people had sisters like mine.
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