WYG day 4 Prompt: 11 a.m.

11 am

It’s 11 a.m. and I am sitting at the table in the kitchen, listening to the same music I have been listening to all summer, the soundtrack to Centuarworld. It’s been my comfort all summer; one song in particular is tethering me to the world.

I should be working on cleaning up the kitchen and purging things from the house. But instead of doing that, I am overwhelmed with stuff in the house from the last two years of struggling with COVID and trying to get our twins moved up to their room, and purging, and painting and creating a nice space for each child to be in, and my own anxiety and depression, and then, murder.

The only reason I know it’s 11 a.m. is because of my kids. In a lot of ways they are tethering me to this world–not in a ‘I-would-have-killed-myself-whtout-them’ kind of way, but in more of a ‘I-have-to-take-care-of-two-small-humans’ kind of way. 

But grief is making it hard to even take care of myself right now, so taking care of them is also difficult. There’s been a lot of television and a lot of video games. And a lot of me sitting at the table in the kitchen and doom scrolling.

In the first week after Sarah, Tyler and Lula were murdered, I spent a lot of time crying and having the kids beg me to tell them what happened to Sarah, Tyler and Lula. I didn’t want to give them details, but I also didn’t want to not tell them anything. Their deaths were out of the ordinary, and then we didn’t know what exactly had happened to them (although we all had hopes that it wasn’t as horrible as it could have been). I want to protect them from the horrors of their murders, but at the same time I want them to know that there are things in the world that can really hurt them. It’s a strange balancing act.

I constantly refreshed google for news on what happened to them and what was going on with the investigation.

I read that the mother of the alleged shooter didn’t believe that her son was capable of such violence and that he had had a small obsession with guns, but he was over it. And that the family had a gun with them, but it was locked up. That Arlo came to his mother when the shootings occurred and said that it was a man in black that was shooting his family and her son was not wearing black, he was wearing green. And I wept with rage, knowing intellectually that this mother was also having a hard time with the death of her son, but also wanting to drive to Nebraska and find her and shake her and yell, WHY DO YOU THINK THIS WOULD HELP ANYONE?

And then the details came out (which I will not recount here because it’s bad enough that it’s in my brain, I don’t want it in your brain too). But the worst thing that could have happened pert near had happened to these three beautiful amazing human beings. They had suffered as I had hoped they hadn’t suffered. And not all the details were released, so I can only imagine what Arlo saw and experienced, and I can only hope that it’s not as bad as what is living in my brain. Too many episodes of Criminal Minds. And the kids saw me crying when I read what had happened to my friends, and they begged to know. I know they are curious 8 year olds, but this is one thing I don’t want to burden them with because it’s just too much.

So now, today, it’s almost 11 a.m. and I have a therapist appointment at 11 and I am going to head out shortly. Today is very anxious, very filled with catastrophizing. Is it from Lula’s birthday over the weekend, and that sneaking up on me? I don’t know because honestly anxiety is my normal state of being.

I just know that for me, right now, 11 a.m. cannot come soon enough.