It's Friday night.........Joe is in Columbus helping his brother make/put together boxes or something for his sunglass business. This is what Anthony wanted for his bachelor party - yes, I know, weird. But his business just expanded, doubled actually, and apparently when you pay over 300 dollars for a pair of sunglasses you get them in boxes assembled by the owner himself and his fiancee and his brothers and anyone else you can rope into assembling these boxes that these very cool, very cutting edge sunglasses come in. My 88 cent sunglasses from Marc's didn't come in ANY box and the tag that was on them was not very classy AT ALL. Anyway.............Friday night........
I come home from a leader's meeting which was AMAZING.....love my church, love the people in it and if it had I steeple I would love it too. I had a bit of a cold and my head was hurting but I thought, hey I will watch a little hulu, wrap up my Mitch Rapp book and be asleep in no time, tomorrow is Saturday which means Saturday morning cartoons and I will be good to go by 10 am the next morning..........
Fast forward to 2:30 am............I am SO. NOT. OKAY. In fact I am laying on the kitchen floor curled up in the fetal position looking at a bottle of medication, sobbing. MY HEAD HURTS SO BADLY. It seems I developed a migraine on top of having a cold and sore throat. I call Joe because I haven't slept, the pain is UNBELIEVABLE at this point and I can't remember how to take the medication that I have. Plus I want some sympathy and have been crying for an hour or two. In fact at some point in the night I was in bed, crying and saying help, help, help over and over again. This is so not me. I hate to ask for help and I do try my best to just suck it up and not complain when I don't feel well.
Why?
Because I am an amazingly stoic person who deals with pain well?
Not so much.
I am an amazingly uncompassionate person who would rather not deal with other people's pain. It's an area I have been working on since becoming married. I did not realize I had this problem, exactly, until I was married. Joe would stub his toe or bite his tongue or have a cold or some other malady and I would not register the appropriate amount of sympathy or have the correct facial expressions. Apparently it is NOT funny when someone jumps out of their seat when biting their tongue. The first time it happened I had thought that perhaps his tongue had fallen out of his mouth and I was a bit perplexed when it was just nipped but THIS HURTS ALOT and deserves sympathy and I have been working on that.
I swear I have gotten better.
It would probably help if after I conveyed the correct amount of sympathy if I would stop asking.....wasn't that SO compassionate, I think I am doing so much better, don't you? It seems an authentically compassionate person would not feel the need to point out their compassion.......it's a work in progress.........
Anyway........my poor husband gets the 2:30 phone call from his sobbing wife when he is 2 1/2 hours away and he didn't even drive there. His brother, Vince, drove. He calls his mom, finds out the specifics on the meds and calls me back. I take a huge pill and then have to take another one in an hour. It is 3:40 until the pain starts to lessen. It is about 5 minutes after that that I fall asleep for the first time all night...............ahhhhhh............sweet relief.
4:15 am..........Francesca crawls into bed with me.......can we read books?
ARE. YOU. SERIOUS?
Oh my word. She asks about every half hour until finally at 6:15 I drag myself from bed and go to the living room. I tell her she can watch. I go up to the TV cabinet and open the doors. I feel a bit woozy from the lack of sleep and most likely the medication. I start to feel a bit heavy. I kind of gently collapse to the floor.
Francesca says watch? Mom we watching?
Ummm.........hmmmmmmm, well, let's see. I try to lift my head, no go. I lift my arm about an inch and it falls back down. I cannot move.
Huh.
Ummm, Francesca? Can you get me the phone? Just crawl up on the counter and get it....
She brings it over. I lay there a few more minutes thinking if I can just get myself up and the movie in I can lay on the couch for as long as I want. Just need to get myself up there. I do not want to call anyone at 6:15 in the morning and have them picking me up off the floor.
I drag myself up. Put the movie in. Collapse on the couch.
Francesca? Was she worried? Was she concerned that she watched her mother collapse before her eyes and not be able to get up for a little while?
NOT AT ALL.
I guess she gets her compassion from me............we'll have to be working on that so that one day she doesn't get married and find that she is completely missing this component from her personality. Maybe we'll do some role playing today or maybe just wait til dinner and see if Daddy bites his tongue again. It's always a good place to start :)
Oh, and by the way, what makes this all so much worse is that my husband is one of the most compassionate people I know. He is a WONDERFUL caretaker when I am sick which is so much more often than he is.........FABULOUS, really. I actually try to mimic what he does when I am sick for when he is sick. I am getting better, aren't I, babe?
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