Comfort

Comfort, comfort, comfort, the word keeps chasing anxiety around in my head. I heard it so many times after my daughter passed away--I hope XYZ brings you comfort. I never completely understood what it meant. How can you truly find comfort in any situation where people hope you will? Comfort apparently means "a state of physical ease and freedom from pain or constraint," or "
the easing or alleviation of a person's feelings of grief or distress." Where would that come from? Another person? Anti-anxiety medication? I have no idea.

The closest I ever came to a feeling of comfort in the days after losing my daughter is a blue blanket. It's a fuzzy, light blue blanket that I'd bought to put on our guest bed. It somehow ended up in the family room. One day when I was sitting there in my usual miserable, half-aware state (this would be within the first 3 days or so after her death), a friend of mine put the blanket over me, saying I looked like I needed it. And somehow, that was comfort. That she knew to put it on me, the way it felt at the time. I still look at that blanket and think "comfort." 

Now, almost 6 years later, anxiety has percolated to the surface. I've been through a lot the past few years, and hadn't realized how much until I went back to a therapist today. I went back because of various issues I've faced with my husband, and those have REALLY brought up anxiety. In catching her up on my life, I described the past few years--my own breast cancer treatment, my mother's current battle against it (her third, and toughest), my parents' dysfunctional interactions, the stress of working full-time and having two young children and trying to do it all JUST RIGHT. 

I suppose it makes sense that putting pressure on yourself will eventually make you crack. But, and I'm sure I've written this before, it doesn't happen. I keep waiting to completely break down to a point where someone shows up to take care of me and I'm finally relieved of all responsibility. It just DOESN'T HAPPEN. Maybe that's not how I'm wired. Maybe I refuse to relinquish responsibility of my children. I don't know. I sort of wish for it, but maybe not.

So comfort. That would be the next best thing to a total breakdown. But where do I find it? Where is it this time? 

I haven't written in my diary for many years. I'm thinking I need to start again. Maybe some measure of comfort can be found in its pages. I feel I wrote my way back to sanity before, maybe I can do it again. I feel like I don't know myself, don't know what I feel, need, should ask for, or do. 

Comfort. Desperately seeking comfort.