"Normal"

Normal. I've been thinking about that word a lot lately. The dictionary says that normal means "usual, typical, or expected." After losing Ian and now Madison, I couldn't tell you what my definition of normal would be. I do know that it's far from "usual, typical, or expected." In fact, it's probably the complete opposite. 

Nothing has been "normal" since December of 2014. By early 2015, I thought I had figured out my new normal. And while it still wasn't a perfect dictionary definition, it was closer than what my "normal" is now. At this point, I'm not even sure what exactly "normal" means to me.

Because there's nothing normal about burying your child. Let alone burying two of your children. There's nothing normal about going to the hospital to have your baby and going home empty handed. There's nothing normal about crying yourself to sleep trying to remember what the weight of your daughter felt like in your arms, or the smell of her body as you cuddled her close.

But that is my normal. And while I hate that that's the truth, there's nothing that can change that. Right now, I'm still navigating what "normal" means to me now. I think that that is why I'm having anxiety about going back to work tomorrow. Physically, I am well enough to go back. Emotionally, who knows. Some days I feel like I can make it through. I can smile, I can laugh, I can enjoy life. Others, everything hits me like a sack of bricks and I feel like I'm struggling to climb out of a hole that is too tall for me to reach the top.

And I'm scared. I'm scared of what my "normal" will look like after I go back to work and to what society considers my normal life. These past two weeks, if I needed to cry, I could. If I wanted to remember how big her hands and feet were, I could run my hands across the molds we made. If I wanted to fall asleep cuddling the pink blanket Madison was wrapped in, I just needed to turn off the lights and close my eyes. Tomorrow I can't do that. 

Tomorrow I have my students to see, coworkers to talk to. I have a job to do. And I'm scared that when I start doing my job again, I'll forget how soft her hands were and how they felt holding my finger. I'm scared that I won't see her face every time I close my eyes. I'm scared that as the days go by, my new "normal" won't have Madison in the center of it. 

I don't know what my "normal" will look like at the end of all of this, and that's really scary too. But I know that no matter what, Ian and Madison will always be in the back of my mind. And sometimes in the front. And it will be a daily struggle to balance remembering them and living my life. I guess that that will be my new "normal", no matter how not "normal" it really is.