Doing nothing actually sucks

We have nothing on, and no where to be - except home and our regular extra curricular activities - for 4 weeks.

Finally having a few weeks in a row with nothing on is something I’ve been looking forward to.

It is the first time since Pete died we have a whole 4 weeks of no firsts, no birthdays, anniversaries, events, places to travel to...

I have wondered for a while if I might have been burning the candle at both ends a bit. Pushing the envelope of my coping capacity with the idea that if I just keep ploughing through it will be ok.

I wonder if maybe I’d been trying too hard to do all the things. To meet everyone’s expectations (even though everyone says they don’t have any of me, when I don’t meet the ‘non-expectations’ they tend to let me know with seemingly heartfelt words like ‘oh that’s disappointing, we had been looking forward to seeing you...’). To keep everything ticking along.

I didn’t know what else to do. What else would I be doing?

And so I did it all and then I craved for a bit of nothing to do.

But now it’s come round, I think I might prefer to be busy.

Slowing down means recognising the new reality of your life hasn’t changed. Or gotten better.

Slowing down means your body begins to show you how tired you actually really are.

Having time means you can think more about how much you really do miss your person, for the oddest of reasons but mostly when people are absolute fools and you have no one to vent your anger to when conversations are spinning through your head late at night.

It means you can realise how much you really are alone as the only adult in your kids’ lives - especially you fail to be able to drive them home after going through such a traumatic lunch that your brain can’t process it all and it leaves you bewildered and head spinning in tears sobbing into the steering wheel on the side of the road in remote Victoria with four scared children in the car because they have never seen their mother truly unable to cope and they don’t know how to help.*

Having nothing on means I can’t ignore the garden any more and the reality that it’s going to be a lot of work to refind the garden beds under the weeds after 9 months of nothing

Having nothing on means I have to sit with my grief. And it’s uncomfortable and I don’t like it and I want an excuse to have to show up or do something to pretend it’s not happening.

Having nothing on means that I can’t escape the reality of solely getting kids organised every day and fighting the battle wills against them and their own grief and frustrations and just age appropriate arguments.

Having nothing on has made me realise just how hard and how exhausting it has been doing all the things. How much it still hurts physically - in all of my musculoskeletal places but mostly my shoulders and neck.

But having nothing on has also allowed me to sit with our amazing children and realise that they are exactly that, and that while they might fight and bicker and back-answer each other and me they are kind and loving and we make a pretty good team.

Having done all of the things with these little humans Pete and I created and being so proud of how they’ve negotiated it all that if everything falls around us, we’ve got each other and ourselves.

Having nothing to do means I’ve been able to reflect on the people in our lives and how the whole ‘people will disappear after a few weeks’ hasn’t happened and these people in our lives who love us are here for the long haul, for us.

Having nothing to do means I can start to try to give back to those people who have given to us. To give of them some of my time like they have given me and our family.

Having nothing to do and no where to be might mean my liver might get a reprieve.

It might mean we get into a bit of normal rhythm and see what the ebb and flow of life looks like now.

It might mean I get to cry a bit more about losing Pete instead of trying to be the pillar of strength I’ve needed to be for the kids.

Then doing nothing and having planned means my head can fill itself with anguish over our experience, can make itself sleepless by recounting terrible conversations, can exhaust itself with a to-do list.

Doing nothing and having nothing planned might be just what I need and it might be absolutely the one thing I don’t need.

And doing nothing and having nothing planned means I can’t put off everything I’ve been merrily doing the bare minimum of for the last 9 months - like the housework and the gardening and the lawn mowing and clothes washing.

It also allows me to try and process my grief a bit more - because it’s sat behind all of the doing things and the going places and the helping the kids and the smiling in the photos and the presenting a strong exterior.

I’m not liking it much. But it had to happen eventually.

Maybe I could start stressing about getting to a wedding and having kids at their ballet concert on the same weekend, then Grade 6 graduation and Christmas now... that would save me having to deal with my reality.

P.S - I’m kidding. I’m trying to sit and do nothing except what I just need to do daily and make a mental note for those things.

*They did, in fact, help by texting my Mum saying “Ma - Mummy is not ok” and then my Mum drove 2 hours to collect me and drive me the rest of the way home after a day of work and having only driven a 5hr round trip the previous day to drop my dad off for a knee replacement, because: Amazing.