Becoming

Well, the first day has come and gone and somehow I managed to stop sniveling long enough to realize it's time for me to move forward with all the new opportunities I'm now presented with. That train of thought lasted about ten minutes. So, I decided to take advantage of the silence and get some writing done. After about an hour of staring at the screen, I decided my heart wasn't really in it. I cleaned, and cleaned, and after a short break I cleaned some more, anything to get my mind off the absence of my daughter. Hopping in the car to run errands, I made it about half a block before a wave of terror came over me and I came to a screeching halt. For one horrible second, I thought I'd left my daughter behind and my heart was nearly to my throat before I remembered where she really was.

I was already standing on the sidewalk by the time that big yellow bus came rumbling to a stop in front of my house. My poor daughter - I hugged her so tightly, her eyes nearly bugged out. All in all, I called the day a draw.

Becoming a woman who functions independently of children for eight hours a day is turning out to be much more difficult than I thought. It's like somebody saying I can have all the candy in the store, but I have to eat it alone.

The fact that I have been given a golden opportunity is not lost on me. But, I have suddenly gone from being "mom" all day long, every five seconds, to becoming a woman with a goal. If ever there was a moment in my life where I felt like the perverbial caterpillar who turned into a butterfly, it's now. I'm becoming the person I forgot I wanted to be. Try waking up to that realization over a bowl of Fruit Loops one fine morning.

I'm still the mom, I know that. The difference is that now I have to seperate my mom mentality from my intentions for myself. For so long people have called me "strong" for being able to deal with a child with special needs. From where I'm sitting now, that's the easy part. Dealing with myself is proving to be a challenge when I had thought it would be a delight. In some ways, it's like starting a new life. I'm finding my thoughts drifting to what I want to do rather than when the next diaper change is. I actually have lucid, intelligent thoughts instead of saying, "Do you have to go potty?"

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