It’s not unusual for me to hear a confession, some times it’s more awkward than others. The senior estimator from a local painting company came by Friday morning to look at my bedroom for an official quote. It was a quick survey, but as he was heading out, we stood in the foyer and he asked me about my new tattoo. He rolled up his sleeves to show the work he got in trade for a few paint jobs, from a local tattooist who begged his friends for negative Yelp reviews so he would never get anyone from Yelp. “I understand why people cut,” I blinked. Maybe his British accent, relaxed demeanor, felt dissonant with what he was saying, “when you’re getting tattooed, you can’t think about whatever you’ve got going on in your head. You just have pain.”

He went on, “Cat dies? Go to the tattooist for two hours. ‘What do you want?’ Doesn’t matter, just do 2 hours of tattooing. Two hours of my brain getting shut off.” I nodded, twenty-one hours of tattooing over the past few months on my own body. It was a validating, vulnerable and raw conversation, in a way where we managed to both expose some pain exorcised through ink without talking at all about whatever drew us to sit for hours to permanently commemorate it.

“I even enjoy going to the dentist!”

I’ve found myself tangled and lost, with free time taken and other time borrowed over the past three weeks to further ignore the pain I can’t seem to kick. I’ve never been good at temperance, and Jon gave me 20 years of pragmatic temperance, and that means I’m out of practice. It’s only a problem if someone notices, right? Just let me sink into this velvet void until this storm blows over. If it ever blows over. If it never blows over. Stand leather-clad on a catwalk lips locked, blocking traffic to approving smirks, arrive ten minutes late to a scheduled pick up. Wake up. Come down.

Can’t keep this up, the cost too high even if paid in adoration.

“I feel like you’re prioritizing your social life over us,” my eldest kiddo said to me. I am beyond grateful for the relationship I have with my teen, because it means when I ask if something’s up, I get an answer that’s clear and plain that I can work with. It’s true, I’ve been working on getting a new group off the ground so last weekend I co-hosted a mixer Saturday evening. And then I’ve been spending time in an unexpected relationship that I’ve been both consumed by and trying to also kindly sabotage at every turn.

I made it clear, and believe to my core, that my kids and the health and well-being of this household come first. My eldest said he didn’t want to say anything because he knows my social life makes me happy, to which I replied, “You and your sister make me happy.” Three days in to being brought back to earth, for the better, with clear conversations with both my kiddos and the person I’m dating. Schedules will need to be adjusted, and communications even more deliberate, but with all this the pain is back.

I hate navigating any of this. I hate not knowing my own mind, not knowing when I will turn over in my bed and see Jon’s face in my mind. Remember when things were comfortable with a rhythm and mundane tasks, groceries and dinner and summer cook-outs. There have been wonderful new experiences, things learned, people met and friends made since the ‘Year of Whatever’ started. There’s been important and necessary buttressing built inside me that I had trouble building with Jon.

And joy feels hard, only found holding on to both sides of her face staring into eyes that don’t blink. It’s not a long term strategy, not a strategy at all. She tells me there’s something to be found in time. The misshapen pieces of broken selves smashed to fill the grieving holes inside. Approaching the summer solstice I thought for a brief moment I may have cracked it, this grief, that maybe I wouldn’t have to continue to carry it, but turns out I have to, and moreover my kiddos still carry it, and we got to carry it together.

Now what do I do when I have a new person offering to help carry it?

Looks like it’s time to change the subject.