The Quiet Disorientation of a Fresh Start

For years, I lived on high alert. I carried the weight, ignored the fatigue, and kept moving because stopping wasn't an option. Every day was about getting through that day. Hold the line, finish what's in front of me, make it to the other side.

I don't want to say too much about what it was. It was paperwork, and a deadline I couldn't move, and for a long time I didn't know how it was going to turn out. If it went wrong, a lot of other things went wrong with it. So I didn't really look ahead. I didn't let myself. There were stretches where I felt pretty hopeless.

When I finally started the process, every day for weeks I was waiting for the bad news. Every time the phone rang I figured this was it.

Then the day actually came. The box finally got checked. Not even the final version. Just enough to get me by. But enough.

I sat in the truck for about thirty minutes afterward. I kept looking at it and I couldn't believe it. That was it? After all those years?

I thought there'd be a flood of relief, but it doesn't work like that. Instead everything just went still. A heavy, disorienting kind of still. When you've been braced for impact that long, being safe feels foreign.

I felt like a new person. I still do, kind of. But the life I was fighting so hard to hold onto, the house, the kids, all of it, feels like something I'm watching from across the room. I'm in it but I'm not really in it yet.

My body hasn't caught up. It's still waiting for the next hit, even though the storm already passed. I wake up with that knot in my stomach and then I remember. It's ok. It's actually ok. It's actually a bit overwhelming.

I haven't known how to pray about it either. For years it was "please let this work out." Now it did and I don't really know what to say. Thank you, I guess. Over and over.

So I'm standing at the start of something new and feeling more numb than happy. I'm learning to let the fog sit. You don't get your footing back overnight after living like that for so long. I think I'm allowed to look down the road now. Not too far yet. But a little.