I got moving this morning because I had a time constraint. And, also, to an extent, the fact that I wasn’t in my own bed. It’s easier to leave a bed that I didn’t spend every night with my husband in. Gosh, we bought this mattress back in 2019, I think. Yeah, it was a ten year replacement for our first bed we purchased in 2009.

I got showered, ate ramen for breakfast, and then my neighbor who had driven me from Cambridge the day before picked me up and brought me to work. I really appreciated that. I had planned on taking a lyft to work, but it was nice not to have to.

It was both more and less difficult to see my colleagues than I’d expected. In some ways, more difficult, because they all seemed the same. Less, because only two people even acknowledged my mourning. One of those was my close friend who I spent Thanksgiving with, so that felt normal.

I am very glad that I am not working in an office on a day to day basis. It’s still hard for me to contain my emotions for more than an hour or two at a time. Working remotely, I rarely have a meeting that’s more than 90 minutes, and most are much shorter. It gives me time to just cry and yell and scream and let all the emotional energy that builds up inside me out. To take little mental breaks. To run around my house and breathe in fresh, clean air.

I wondered, sitting in the big meeting, who near me was smelling stinky. Then I realized that, although the room was quite cold, I was stress sweating. I was the stinky one. Once I realized that, it got harder and harder to hold everything inside and not have an emotional breakdown.

I did get to cry a little on the drive home, with my neighbor understanding and giving my hand a squeeze. That was nice.

I think people are afraid of grief. I can understand that. It’s the last thing you expect or want to happen to you. People didn’t shun me or anything. But I didn’t feel normal. They were the same, but I had changed…

I got back to work after I got home. I didn’t really eat lunch or afternoon snack, so I was feeling not great. And then I started getting bad bubble gut. Was it from the ramen for breakfast? The stress? A combination of those and other factors?

There was a family zoom this evening, and I got to talk to my parents about the mediation process. Then my brother got on and told us that he stopped and helped a random woman at the airport find the baggage claim, and her name turned out to be the same as mine. A beautiful coincidence.

I didn’t end up going for a walk today, but I’ll be up for tomorrow’s early morning walk. I like how I feel when I get that early morning walk. And right now, I’ve got to do my Move U exercises. It will be spinal oscillations today. Just something calm and meditative that will help ease my stressed body. Looking forward to hot springs tomorrow.

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