Emotional Overload

I think that I have either witnessed too much or something- but I feel like I am full on human emotion. Like I can't hold any more. This isn't a despair feeling or anything like that- it is literally like I just have filled my little teapot of humanity to the brim today, and I might be spilling a little all over the place.

This doesn't make sense, I know. I'm going to try a different approach and give you some images and thoughts that have been running through my mind these last few weeks. I have been to two funerals, my husband has preached 3 and has another on the way. It was father's day (which I did very little to merit being a good wife or mother or daughter). It was my brother and sister-in-law's (Kelly and JR) wedding anniversary- totally missed that. My niece's birthday- went to the party but didn't call on her birthday. We're her God-parents too and we still haven't done the cool gift idea we thought of (her baptism was a year ago). My best friend from seminary is moving today- and I believe her miracle daughter is turning two today (haven't been able to get in touch with her). My little sister broke up with her boyfriend and now she's a little under the weather but maybe she's better- who knows because I haven't actually talked to her in a week or two. My older sister probably still hates me for calling her out on the blog for pestering me about her daughter's picture. My in-laws were here this past weekend because Jason and I can't find a weekend long enough to make the trip to them. My Grandmother is moving in a few weeks and we're cleaning out her stuff and she keeps saying how she'll miss me and how she wishes I could go with her. I keep remembering little things about Memaush and wishing she was one more person on my cell phone that I could call on the trafficky way home from Grandmother's- not to fill the time, but to fill the void she has left in my heart. I have had a babysitter for Hunter for when I help clean-out with Grandmother and he seems happy but I feel weirdly guilty. Hunter prefers "Dada" to "Mama" so obviously that it's beginning to feel a little rejecting. Jason has not been getting up in the morning to exercise and neither have I and I feel responsible for both of us- like if I could get my act together he would be together and we would be healthy.

I've spent Friday and today almost entirely looking through photo albums with Grandmother. This has endeared me to generations of family members I never had the privelege to meet- but now that I've heard their stories, read their letters and come to love them- I feel like I miss them. I'm mourning the relationship I never had with them. I'm filled to the brim with their presence in my blood. I read a telegram today from 1962 that read simply: Papa died this morning. It brought tears to my eyes because I had been reading sweet and loving letters from Papa August- my Grandfather's father- and I had been looking over pictures of him studying at his desk and smoking his pipe. I read the letters of his daughter and wife about their grief and shock over his death.

It's like I need time to grieve for all the losses in my life- but none of them are real. They are all intangible guilt for not doing what I should have or wanted to, fear for the future that lay uncertainly ahead, and sadness for the missed opportunity to commune with some of the most wonderful people I have ever read about. I have been sitting with these pictures for so long that they don't look old to me or outdated. I recognize my Grandmother's mother as a child in old photos because somehow I know her now.

My heart is full and so everything makes or breaks it. I need to release it somehow but other than writing it down- I don't know what to do with this feeling of heavy-ness.

I feel silly and ridiculous too.

SO- the span of human emotion. Guilt, fear, joy, sadness, love, community... it's all sitting on top of my lungs.

It's hard to breathe too deeply without some of it slipping out.