Unusually Normal

In recent weeks since my son  moved out of the house , I’ve gone through a range of emotions…
from fear to relief,
happiness to emptiness,
anger to empathy.
Moments of feeling pissed off,
resentful,
used
and invaded…
to moments of feeling unusually normal.
Is that even a thing? Unusually normal?
It must be, because I’ve felt it.

When the house is eerily quiet, I think to myself, Wow! This must be how normal people feel in their own homes …like all the time or at least, often. 
I can’t believe I lived in total chaos for so many years.
This quiet is weird, heavenly, but weird.

I’ve been able to watch some of my favorite television shows. I'm actually all caught up on "Scandal."
I even watched one of my favorite political talk shows and was actually able to follow along and keep up with what was being said, without thinking to myself, Yada, yada, yada. Who the f*#% cares? I got my own problems.

I spent a couple of Saturday afternoons watching back to back movies on HBO, without interruption. Well, Blue watched some of them with me so there was his occasional question, but not intentional disruption. (Don't tell him I told you, but he even watched "The Devil Wears Prada" with me. )At first he protested. "This is ridiculous! She's so mean." Probably reminded him of his Spanish teacher. But then, he would not leave the room until it was over. I loved every moment of him watching with me.

When Red was here, if the focus was not on him, he found a way to make it so. He would come into the room and say something like, “Why are you watching this crap?” Or he would just start talking about his subject of interest, without any consideration for what was happening in the room before he walked in.

A quiet, peaceful home, watching television, reading real books —these are simple pleasures that most people take for granted.
These simple things I have not been able to do for years, at least within the comfort of my own home, with any sense of regularity.

I shared some of these feelings in therapy today. Have I told you how much I love my therapist? 
She makes me think about myself for a change. We dive into my feelings and she redirects me from judging myself. Instead, she helps me to congratulate myself for both simple and extremely complex things that I have accomplished. She helps me to acknowledge the transition that I'm going through. How I'm trying to let go of control over his life after so many years of pulling all of the strings and being the fixer.

She encourages me to take care or myself —to reconnect with who I am, other than servant to others. She has confirmed what I already knew, I’m living with P.T.S.D (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). I am recuperating from years of what was to a degree, an abusive relationship.

Today, she said something quite profound. “Instead of feeling guilty because you’re finally having some peace, doing things for yourself after all of these years, how about you look at it like, you’re finally showing yourself some compassion.”

All of these years, I’ve talked about needing therapy for myself, while I was too busy making sure that everyone else got every kind of therapy available to man.
My oxygen mask was withered, frayed, all cracked up.
There was no steady flow of air.
I was gasping, while everyone else was breathing clearly.

Well, not anymore.