Nama's Natural Life

I couldn’t sleep.

Again.

Tonight Matt and I argued.

Sort of.

It started because of work.

Except it wasn’t really about work.

It was about marriage.

And healing.

And fear.

And politics.

And one of our daughters.

And the way one person somehow refuses to stay in their own lane.

So as Matt snored loudly. Very loudly next to me, I sat staring at my screen trying to decide whether to write… or just keep scrolling like I have for the past few weeks.

Marriage?

Work?

My daughter?

Menopause?

My nervous system?

Eventually I just typed…

“Bahhhhh.”

Turns out that was the most honest sentence I’d written all week.

Can I just have one ordinary week?

I thought we did.

Oddly enough, it was in Texas.

Six adults.

A preschooler.

Two vehicles.

A thousand miles.

The girls arguing in the backseat like they were twelve instead of grown women.

Matt and me talking for hours.

Crying.

Laughing.

Remembering each other.

It wasn’t perfect.

It was ordinary.

And for the first time in a very long time, ordinary felt extraordinary.

Maybe that’s what happens after enough chaos.

You stop dreaming about vacations in Italy or winning the lottery.

You start dreaming about Tuesday staying Tuesday.

Then we came home.

Reality knocked.

You know that feeling when you’ve been sick for weeks, finally wake up one morning feeling like yourself again, and by lunch you realize the fever is back?

That’s what this felt like.

Everyone keeps asking me what’s wrong, and I don’t have one neat answer.

I have about twenty-seven answers, and they all keep taking turns punching me in the face.

Some days it’s my marriage.

Some days it’s GTR.

Some days it’s watching someone use power like a weapon instead of a responsibility.

Some days it’s watching my daughter pay for decisions she didn’t make.

Some days it’s realizing healing isn’t a straight line.

It’s apparently a toddler with a Sharpie running laps through your house.

I know we’re getting better.

I genuinely do.

But getting better isn’t the same thing as feeling safe.

That’s the part nobody tells you.

People think once someone apologizes, changes, cries, starts showing up differently… the hurt politely packs its bags and leaves.

It doesn’t.

Sometimes it sits quietly in the corner until a Neil Diamond musical decides today is the day.

Or someone mentions renewing wedding vows.

Or another individual meeting gets requested.

Or another boundary has another consequence.

Then suddenly you’re crying over pancakes or sitting in a parking lot wondering why your chest feels like it’s trying to escape.

The hardest part isn’t even the past anymore.

It’s watching the ripples.

I can handle pain that belongs to me.

What I cannot stomach is watching it hit my children.

Watching one of my daughters fight to prove she deserves the job she’s already doing.

Watching politics replace leadership.

Watching people rewrite history because accountability is uncomfortable.

Watching boundaries finally get put in place… and then watching the fallout land squarely on the people we love.

Maybe I’m wrong.

Maybe none of it is connected.

I can’t prove motive, and I’m careful not to confuse what I know with what I fear.

But here’s what I do know.

I was so close to being okay.

Somewhere between Michigan and Texas I let myself believe we’d finally turned a corner.

Then we got home.

Another meeting.

Another accusation.

Another ripple.

I thought we’d finally outrun it.

Instead, it was apparently waiting in our driveway.

And suddenly it all felt close again.

Here’s the part I’m almost embarrassed to admit.

I don’t just hate what happened.

I hate that someone else’s choices still have the ability to intrude into my home, my marriage, my daughter’s work relationships, and my sense of peace.

I hate that one email can erase two weeks of progress.

I hate that one meeting request can drag us back into conversations I thought we had finally left behind.

You know what’s funny?

Even now, I’m still protecting people.

I’m changing names.

Leaving out details.

Softening sentences.

Trying to make sure everyone comes out looking at least a little okay.

Apparently that’s who I am.

Or maybe it’s who I’ve trained myself to become.

People tell you to burn it all down.

To tell your truth.

To stop protecting everyone else.

Maybe they’re right.

But every time I pick up the match, I start worrying about who else gets burned.

So I put it back down.

I don’t know if that’s wisdom.

Or fear.

Or love.

Maybe it’s all three.

Then there’s my husband.

The man I simultaneously want to hug and shake.

I have watched him cry more in the last few weeks than I think I saw in the previous twenty-five years.

That matters.

It isn’t fake.

It isn’t manipulation.

It isn’t nothing.

But neither is the grief.

Because while he is grieving the husband he wasn’t…

I’m grieving the marriage I thought I had.

Those are two different funerals.

He lost the version of himself he thought he had been.

I lost the version of our marriage I thought I was living.

We’re standing beside the same wreckage pointing at different pieces.

Some days I look at him and see the man who makes my coffee every morning.

The man who comes looking for me in parking lots because he doesn’t want me walking alone.

The man who tells me I’m cute while he’s dripping sweat after moving the sprinkler for the seventeenth time because I changed my mind.

Other days…

I still see the years.

The work.

The emotional absence.

And somehow both versions are true.

That’s the exhausting part.

Life refuses to become one story.

It insists on being all of them at once.

The beautiful one.

The heartbreaking one.

The funny one.

The infuriating one.

The hopeful one.

All sitting around the same table arguing over who gets to narrate today.

Meanwhile, my body has apparently unionized.

Every morning another department files a grievance.

My nerves are on strike.

My joints would like to speak to management.

Management, unfortunately, is also exhausted.

Then my hormones wake up, spin the Wheel of Emotional Fortune, and announce today’s prize.

Will it be rage?

Grief?

Brain fog?

Surprise.

You win all three.

I laugh because otherwise I’m the woman crying in Costco over blueberries.

Again.

People ask how I’m doing.

The honest answer?

I’m carrying too many unfinished stories.

A marriage still healing.

A daughter still fighting.

Parents getting older.

Children becoming adults.

A body that no longer follows instructions.

Maybe that’s why I write.

Not because I have answers.

Because writing lets every version of me have a turn.

The angry one.

The hopeful one.

The wife.

The mother.

The woman who wants to forgive.

The woman who still wants to scream.

They all get a paragraph.

Maybe next week will be ordinary.

Maybe it won’t.

Maybe there will be another meeting.

Another email.

Another migraine.

Another conversation neither of us wants to have.

Or maybe…

Maybe Matt will hand me a cup of coffee.

We’ll argue about where to plant another tree.

The girls will call needing something ridiculous.

The puppy will snore.

And for a few hours, nobody will try to burn my life down.

Frankly, that sounds like a pretty spectacular Tuesday.

Maybe that’s all “Bahhhhh” has been trying to say all along.

Not that I’m giving up.

Not that everything is falling apart.

Just that sometimes life gets so tangled, so loud, so unbelievably ridiculous that there aren’t any elegant words left.

Just…

“Bahhhhh.”