I am afraid to be happy.
There.  I’ve said it.  I’ve written it.  It’s true.

I have come to realize several things about myself in recent weeks.  Some are small things.  Some are not. I am not entirely sure what to do with these self revelations yet.  Right now they are slowly unwinding, like thread from a spool.  What I do know is that I seem to have an inability to relax.  A need to constantly hold my breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Waiting for some unknown, horrific event that will once again shatter my world. There have been a lot of them.

I spent most of my childhood waiting.  Waiting for the next time I’d be yelled at for not living up to my parent’s expectations.  Waiting for the next time I’d make a remark that would result in a spoon to the face.  Waiting for the next time a classmate would shun me, because I was overweight, because we didn’t have money.

Once my dad passed away, I pieced a life together.  I was definitely not the same, but eventually I stopped holding my breath.  Then two years later my aunt died.  The aunt who was more of a mother to me than my mother.  The aunt I ran to when I couldn’t talk to my mother.  The aunt I sought solace with when yet again, I was berated for not doing things “The right way.”   Once again, I stood in the cold rain of the cemetery, the same one that we had buried my dad in a scant two years prior, and watched as someone I loved was eulogized and buried.  One by one, I began a slow death march back to that cemetery, almost every year for five years.  Great aunts, great uncles, my only “real” uncle.  I began to look around me and wonder who would be next.

During that time, I met, through my significant other at the time, a darling woman.  A good ten years older than me, a good 100 pounds lighter, born in a different country, but my twin in every other way. Her name was Beth.  We became inseparable.  At the time she and her husband were living in Chicago.  We spoke on the phone daily.  Then, one day, discovered she was pregnant after almost 10 years of trying.  Deciding they wanted to raise their child in a more laid back environment, Beth and her husband decided to move to Mississippi.  They bought a house not 30 minutes from my house.  I was over the moon.  We shopped together, decorated their new house together.  Her husband watched us with great amusement, grateful he wasn’t the one being drug from furniture store to furniture store. I was there when her girls were born.  All 3 of them.  Triplets.  After ten years of waiting, she had an instant family.  I was godmother.  I was part time nanny.  I lived with them for three months helping out.  I was there a scant 9 months later when her son was born.  I was there for so much. We were there for each other.  She helped me through marriage.  Through a divorce.  She never judged.  She was open.  Honest.

Then Columbine happened, and the school shooting in Springfield, OR.  Beth was afraid to send her children through school in the US.  She and her husband decided to move back to her native country, to England.  So a few months before I made my move across country, I helped her pack for a new life, a life that would lead to a great distance between us.  I hugged her tight the day she left.  She held my face in her hands and said, “this is not goodbye”.  It was the last time I ever saw her.  Two years after moving, Beth and her husband were hit head on by another car on a small country road.

At some point after this the walls I built around me got even taller.  More impenetrable.  I stopped letting people in.  Too afraid of getting hurt.  Too afraid of those goodbyes.  I watched my daughter fly through the air on a swing yesterday for the first time ever.  Her hair fluttering in the breeze, an excited smile on her face.  Part of me smiled and laughed.  Part of me cringed inwardly.  I wanted to relax and simply enjoy the day.  But that part of me that keeps waiting for the bad to come will not let me.  I am afraid that if I let my guard down and  revel in the good times it will be an even bigger shock when the bad one comes. Like somehow, if I’m on guard, watching I can prevent it.  If I see it coming it won’t hurt so much.

Which of course is silly.  The logical part of my brain knows that bad things happen and I can neither prevent them nor ease their impact by being vigilant.  The emotional part of my brain is stuck in that cold, wet cemetery.